Best Books of 2007: The Final Word

After a week of rolling it out, all of January Magazine’s Best Books of 2007 feature is now in place and collected here. We had a lot of fun putting this feature together for you, but now we are tired and we’re glad we don’t have to think of the best of anything again for another 11 months or so!

We review from almost all branches of the book industry and, as a result, our choices run the gamut. The January Best of the Year list is not a popularity contest. Our choices reflect what our writers and editors liked best of the books they read and enjoyed throughout the year. They don’t need to qualify their choices. There is no board or panel. No quotas from certain publishers, no authors that had to be included. And though some of the books mentioned here were reviewed for January Magazine in 2007, that’s not part of the criterion. These are, quite simply, the books that our well read eyes and hearts liked best, listed in alphabetical order within the loose category in which they fall:

• children's books • fiction • non-fiction • art & culture

crime fiction from A-I, by title • crime fiction from J-Z

Best of 2007: Crime Fiction, Part II

Lost Echoes by Joe R. Lansdale (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) 352 pages
As a child, Harry Wilkes suffered a mysterious ear infection that seemed to go away as fast and suddenly as it came. But it left him with the ability not only to see dead people but to hear violent occurrences from the past. Now he has to be careful in his surroundings, and map out specific routes whenever he goes somewhere, because at the slightest bang, he might witness some horrible tragedy from an area’s bygone days. It could be a rape, it could be a case of physical abuse. It might even be a murder. Much of this novel recounts Harry’s childhood. My favorite scene is that in which the protagonist goes out for the first time, at age 16, with the family car. His father, a poor but proud laborer, slips him $20 bill, and Harry -- knowing that his father can’t really spare the money -- tries to give it back. But Harry’s dad smiles and refuses, saying, “Take it. This is the kind of thing a father does.” (I’ve lived that scene with my own father on dozens of occasions.) In due time, though, Harry grows up to be a quiet young man who, while out one night with a loser friend, sees an inebriated guy beating up three muggers outside a bar. Seeking out this man after the fight, one Tad Peters, Harry learns that he too stays away from people, escaping his demons in drink and his expertise in the martial arts. Peters takes Harry under his wing, and over time they grow close, agreeing to sober up together. But their determination to avoid life’s darkness is tested after the woman who was Harry’s childhood crush, Kayla Jones -- now a cop -- asks him for help to prove that her father’s supposed suicide was actually a case of homicide. She wants Harry to use his “gift” at the scene of the crime, and try to see if her fears are justified. From there, Lost Echoes becomes a great little thriller, but because author Joe Lansdale spent so many previous pages building up his characters, we know crucial things about them that would not have been mentioned, or might have been glossed over, in a more conventional, pacy thriller. We really care about what happens to these people. In Lost Echoes, Lansdale gives us one of the scariest novels of the year, and one of the funniest (full of his trademark profanity). The bonus is that this is also among the most human novels published in 2007. -- Cameron Hughes

No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay (Bantam) 338 pages
Where’s the note? There has to be a note. My mom never goes away without leaving a note … So insists Cynthia Bigge, in the poignant prologue to Linwood Barclay’s suspenseful and humane thriller, No Time for Goodbye. A 14-year-old Cynthia wakes up hung-over from a night of adolescent excess to find that her mother, father and brother have all vanished without a word or trace. Flash-forward now 25 years: Cynthia is married to high-school English teacher Terry Archer, who narrates this “what-the-hell-is-going-on?” tale with a fine balance of empathy, humor and terror. Strange things start happening to the Archers, and these odd doings seem linked to Cynthia’s revived efforts to learn the truth behind her family’s disappearance. One death occurs, and then another. Long-suppressed deeds rise to the surface -- until at last the danger that once found her family is again at Cynthia’s door. Such extraordinary events lead to equally extreme explanations, in this first standalone novel by Toronto journalist-turned-mystery novelist Barclay, who as a teenager was mentored, via correspondence, by the late Ross Macdonald. The reader is happy to accept this story’s mind-stretching dénouement for the pleasure of sharing hair-raising quality-time with the resourceful and endearing Archer family. -- Tom Nolan

Queenpin by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster) 192 pages
A never-named 22-year-old female narrator starts out in Queenpin working as a bookkeeper in the Tee Hee nightclub. She’s a former Catholic school girl, with a hidden penchant for the dangerous and glamorous. When Jerome and Arthur Bendix, the owners of the Tee Hee, ask her to cook the books, she doesn’t blink an eye. When their bosses find out what’s going on, they send emissary Gloria Denton to take care of business. Denton is an icon in the mob world, an older beauty with brains, still boasting legs a mile long, who sees the potential in our narrator. Under Denton’s tutelage, the narrator learns how to place bets at the track, how to collect casino earnings and how to deliver payoffs to the cops. It’s the high life for both women, cushioned with swanky apartments, steak dinners and oodles of jewelry. Denton is dangerous in her snakeskin shoes and alligator bags, and she doles out punishment just like the big boys. Her young protégé must not only follow Denton’s lead in regards to the rackets, but in how to behave in life, too. The narrator delights in the luxuries of moll living, but chaffs under Denton’s smooth, iron hand. When Vic Riordan, a loser-gambler with big dreams and a perpetual smile, enters the picture, our narrator falls hard for him and her sexual appetite is unleashed. She gives everything to Riordan, despite Denton’s warning to stay clear of his influence. When Denton calls upon Amos Mackey, an up-and-coming gangster, for help in handling the beguiling Riordan, things start to fall apart. And when Detective Clancy puts the screws on the narrator to turn on Denton, her choice is obvious. Queenpin is written in a stylized hard-boiled manner. Women are dolls and guys are meat. The plot is hard-boiled fare, in which romance stands little chance, and loyalty is only as good as the latest payoff. Yet, it’s the gorgeous descriptive qualities of the narrator’s worldview that pull the reader firmly into her lair. Queenpin ends where it began, with Abbott’s protagonist taking care of business. She is beyond redemption, and she wants it that way. -- Anthony Rainone

Red Cat by Peter Spiegelman (Alfred A. Knopf) 288 pages
Red Cat is the third private eye John March novel, following Death’s Little Helpers and Black Maps. There should still be time for all of you to ask for Spiegelman’s books in your stocking this year. Then you can read them all, rather than interact with your extended family, watch bowl games or feel the need to change the oil in your car while your family fumes. Maybe you don’t have the family John March has and, if not, count your blessings. March’s Wall Street brothers and sisters deeply disapprove of our boy. This is a recurring theme throughout the series; Black Maps has one of the grimmer Thanksgiving get-togethers I’ve read in a while. These people are cold. Red Cat escalates the sibling rivalry between March and his brother David. Spiegelman fans will recognize the set-up quickly, for John March endures much in the course of surviving a tragedy in upstate New York, being driven off the police force, and moving back to the city. In an ironic twist, David needs his brother’s help; he’s entangled in a sordid affair and when the woman stalking him turns up dead, the tables are turned in the family dynamic. I’m oversimplifying the plot, because Peter Spiegelman gives a dark texture to every paragraph he writes. His descriptions alone make this book worthwhile; March is not an easy character. He wants to make his way in the world according to his lights, to misquote the works of St. Bonaventure. There’s nothing like independent thought and action to create outrage within the family circle. It’s the holidays. You probably don’t understand the Bowl Championship Series rules any more than I do. I don’t know if Missouri will beat West Virginia or even play them, but a few hours spent with Red Cat, and you won’t care. -- David Thayer

Requiem for an Assassin by Barry Eisler (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) 368 pages
It’s almost funny how bad most thrillers are. Not that thrillers aren’t hard to write: You have to constantly keep the pace going, every action has to lead to another, and your plot has to be at least plausible and interesting; your logic needs to be impeccable and your choreography of tension must constantly one-up whatever you offered in the last tense scene. Barry Eisler makes it look easy, writing the best thrillers available today. What makes them the best, is that he employs all of the techniques mentioned above, but then adds to his storytelling a fierce intelligence and a searing humanity that never fails to amaze me. Take, as an example, Requiem for an Assassin. It starts with longtime hired-gun John Rain trying to walk away from that life and find some kind of peace with his lover Delilah. But before he can, his close friend and partner, Dox, is kidnapped by a rogue CIA agent who wants Rain to carry out three assassinations -- or see Dox die. And so the game begins. Unlike most thriller writers, Eisler does something interesting with his action scenes; he infuses Rain’s growing humanity and pathos into the series of hits. Eisler is a great choreographer of action, and it’s morbidly fascinating to read about him here, finishing a job on a lonely road in a California Bay Area suburb. Rain murders with a chilling efficiency and vigor, and we like John Rain, so go ahead and root for him to complete the job. But congratulations, you just cheered for the death of a computer businessman, loving father and husband. Rain knows what he just did is monstrous; it eats at him as he tries to rationalize that he did it to save a friend and get out of “the life,” but still, he just killed a completely innocent man; and to save Dox, he most likely will have to do it twice more, staining his soul even further. And that’s why Eisler is the best at what he does. He deconstructs the thriller subgenre, while writing a great thriller novel that never insults your intelligence, makes you feel the growing tension with every pore and, most of all, makes you care. That’s quite the achievement. -- Cameron Hughes

Runoff by Mark Coggins (Bleak House Books) 302 pages
This fourth novel (after Candy from Strangers, 2006) to feature Bay Area private eye August Riordan, opens with one of the most original action sequences I’ve seen. Waiting in his Galaxie 500 on a self-appointed stakeout, Riordan searches for the person or persons responsible for ripping off ATM machines in downtown San Francisco. And by that, I don’t mean someone who hacks in by punching some obscure code and the money flows out like a river. This thief is physically removing ATM machines. That creative set-piece and the comedic chase through Chinatown that follows set Runoff apart from any other book this reviewer has read all year, and further establishes author Mark Coggins as a major contributor to the P.I. genre. The attempted apprehension of the ATM bandit and the wreckage it creates put Riordan on the radar screen of the notorious Leonora Lee, more commonly known as the “Dragon Lady,” a powerful business and political presence in San Francisco. She hires him to investigate the alleged fixing of the recent mayoral election. The Dragon Lady’s anointed candidate, the hapless and aggressively bland Alan Chow, was easily the most conservative candidate on the ballot. Chow finished third in a field of three, but captured enough votes to force a runoff between establishment moderate Hunter Lowden and Green Party maverick Mike Padilla. Lee suspects the election was rigged, and hires Riordan to find out if it was true, how it was done, and at who’s bidding. In the midst of suspense and carnage, readers are taken on a tour of the San Francisco power structure, acquainted with modern struggles over the need to provide low-cost housing (struggles that run counter to businesses more interested in selling million-dollar condos that reach above the bay’s fog) and introduced to a lethal Hong Kong-controlled gang. “What’s Happening With the Private Eye Novel” is a popular crime fiction parlor game. Runoff is the answer to that question. -- Stephen Miller

Safe and Sound by J.D. Rhoades (St. Martin’s Minotaur) 228 pages
This is a trip down the murkier passages of the soul, a terrain that philosophers and religionists warn against. While Safe and Sound protagonist Jackson Keller’s main goal is to rescue and protect those he loves from one of crime fiction’s more ruthless killers, the cost of “safe and sound” is enormous. Keller is in a psychological no-man’s land. His inner demons took their twisted shape back when he was a sergeant in the U.S. Army and witnessed the death of his men on a hot night in the Saudi desert. His Bradley fighting vehicle was mistaken for an enemy tank, and if not for happenstance, Keller would have been incinerated too. Keller was left with survivor’s guilt, and the outrage he endured was a ripening worm in his psyche that finally begins to rear its ugly head. The ability to find men is Keller’s one redeeming asset, and he lends his expertise to private investigator and girlfriend Marie Jones on her newest case. Local attorney Tammy Healy has hired Jones to locate a missing child, Alyssa Fedder. The girl is believed to have been taken by her father, David Lundgren, a sergeant with the army’s Special Forces. Although this case may initially seem like a matter of two parents fighting over child custody, it quickly spirals outward and intersects with another more sinister story line. Lundgren is AWOL -- and he has a killer on his trail. The main villain here is an Afrikaner mercenary-for-hire named De Groot. The South African’s skill lies in extracting information, using various forms of torture. Like any diligent craftsman, De Groot is practiced at what he does, and he has an assortment of tools useful to his trade. De Groot’s motivations are very simple -- he has no compunction against torturing and killing to get what he wants, and he wants to retire rich. He has figured out a means to the latter, and it involves David Lundgren and two of Lundgren’s fellow special-ops soldiers, Mike Riggio and Bobby Powell. Safe and Sound takes on a survivalist sensibility, as the locale switches to North Carolina’s rural Blue Ridge Parkway. Keller and Jones find Alyssa Fedder in the safe care there of commandos Powell and Riggio, the child given to them by the now-not-heard-from Lundgren. Keller, James and the commandos form an alliance. This group eventually bunkers down at a nearby safe house, until members can sort things out, and perhaps bring in federal help. De Groot finds them, however. What follows is a confrontation of visceral carnage by men who have honed the art of killing. There are no winners at the conclusion and there is no happy ending. Safe and Sound is a tour-de-force, diabolical thriller. It paints how real evil in the world works -- when things that go bump in the night suddenly stare you in the face. -- Anthony Rainone

Secret Asset by Stella Rimington (Alfred A. Knopf) 336 pages
Fans of spy thrillers should start paying attention to author Stella Rimington’s protagonist, Liz Carlyle, a counter-intelligence agent with the UK security service MI5, who first appeared in At Risk (2005). Carlyle’s pursuit of enemies of the British Empire bears an unusually cerebral flavor, eschewing Hollywood-style pyrotechnics. Carlyle and her counterparts in Thames House rely on the unusual display of behavior, or the odd bit of personal history, to flush out their adversaries. Make no mistake however, Rimington can write a compelling chase scene or deadly encounter, when needed. Carlyle’s main role is agent-running -- supervising undercover civilian men and women in strategic positions. In Secret Asset, she handles Sohail Din, a 19-year-old aspiring lawyer, code-named Marzipan. Din works in an Islamic bookstore, and there have been suspicious men meeting within that shop’s confines. Din convinces Carlyle that it’s a nefarious matter; she in turn convinces her boss, Charles Wetherby, a sharp dresser and able manager, that some sort of terrorist act is being planned. Soon, a coordinated team is put in place to plant mikes and watch the shop. Although the intrigue involving that bookseller gets hot and heavy, and a key witness is murdered, Carlyle is taken away from the investigation and assigned an equally important task: rooting out a suspected mole planted inside the security service itself. This is a potentially devastating development. Believed to have originally been recruited by the Irish Republican Army, this unknown mole has turned his skills away from spying for Ireland (since the Northern Ireland peace process began) and toward other sinister ends, including possibly aligning himself with the suspected Islamic terrorists connected to the bookstore. Aided by researcher Peggy Kinsolving, Carlyle conducts counter-espionage interviews assessing the psychological make-up of those suspected. The resulting character studies are striking. Rimington is the retired director-general of MI5, so she knows the spy game intimately. Her insights into the mores of intelligence operations are fascinating. The pacing mimics actual intelligence work, meaning the tempo is sometimes slow, sometimes urgent. As Carlyle and her colleagues close in on the suspected terrorists and their truck bomb, your pulse rate is going to accelerate. At the same time, Rimington shows that security agents are ordinary people. Carlyle, for instance, is without prospects for a serious relationship, her apartment is a mess and her mother is sick. At day’s end, she might have a glass of wine and read a good book. To bad Ms. Carlyle herself can’t pick up Secret Asset and escape into its pages herself. It’s a thriller of the finest order. -- Anthony Rainone

The Secret Hangman by Peter Lovesey (Soho Crime) 316 pages
At a time when British crime fiction seems tipped toward the noir edge of things, it is a treat to come across a classic puzzle story. Such is the reward in store for readers who delve into The Secret Hangman, the ninth entry in the Inspector Peter Diamond series. A woman with two young children has disappeared. That missing woman, Delia Williamson, is eventually found -- but, unfortunately, not in the way Diamond expected: she’s suspended from a children’s swing set in a public park, with a noose tied around her neck. All the preliminary signs point to a suicide: a broken fingernail or two, but no signs of a struggle, no indications of sexual assault. Williamson’s significant other, with whom she and her children had been living, boasts a decent enough alibi that would rule out his involvement in foul play. And then, soon after, her ex-husband, Danny Geaves, is discovered hanging from a viaduct over the main drag through Bath, England. Was it a murder borne of a long-simmering resentment? Did Geaves kill his ex, then jump to his death in the most public way of self-execution? Those questions are muddied when Diamond’s intrepid young inspector, Ingeborg Smith, recalls that these hangings are markedly similar to a pair of unexplained deaths just a couple of years earlier. The previous victims, an affluent couple named Twining, could not be more dissimilar from Delia Williamson, a waitress in a local Italian restaurant, and Geaves, a bizarre eccentric with no known current means of support. There may be a serial killer loose. But if there is, how could the fates of these two couples be related? The Secret Hangman, while appearing on the surface to be a serial-killer novel, is actually a throwback to the classic English whodunit, dressed up for the modern age. Author Peter Lovesey is an old pro; so is Diamond. It’s a pleasure to recommend that you spend time with both. -- Stephen Miller

Silverfish by David Lapham (DC/Vertigo) 160 pages
I love a good graphic novel as much as the next yegg, but good graphic novels in the crime-fiction realm that don’t involve overdeveloped guys in tights are relatively hard to find. However, writer and illustrator David Lapham’s Silverfish more than makes up for the scarcity. To put it bluntly, it’s stunning -- simply one of the most unapologetically gut-wrenching, brutally thrilling books I've ever read. In any format. It’s almost like a movie between two covers. By the time I got to the conclusion, in fact, I was flipping the pages so quickly, it almost was a movie. It plays out like Hitchcock on meth, a wicked black-and-white kaleidoscope of teen angst, misunderstandings of noirish proportions, evil stepmothers, local yokel cops, psychotic killers with fish on the brain, deadly secrets and innocent pranks that turn out to have deadly consequences. Mia, a teenage girl, chafing under the bit of dad’s new wife and egged on by her slutty friend, decides to snoop around while her father and stepmother are away for the weekend. Ignoring her asthmatic kid sister’s dire objections, she searches through her stepmom’s belongings, but finds more than she bargained for -- a suitcase full of money and evidence that seems to implicate her stepmother in a murder committed in conjunction with a former lover several years ago. The discovery sets in motion a chain of events that culminate in a chilling showdown in a deserted amusement park on the Jersey shore that looms like a Bruce Springsteen song turned inside out -- and vicious. At first glance, Lapham’s straightforward black-and-white artwork may not seem particularly “arty” compared with some of the illustrations out there in ComicBookLand, but it more than does the job here. The author’s deceptive simplicity of line is positively retro, harking back to the broad-shouldered comic art of the 1950s and ’60s, while his use of shadows shows he’s seen a film noir or two. But then, there’s something almost retro about this story -- I mean, evil stepmoms? Amusement parks? Suitcases of money? And when the art calls for something a little more surreal, as when the killer starts envisioning schools of silverfish eating into a man’s brain, Lapham more than rises to the task. Lapham, of course, is the man responsible for the sporadically published and highly regarded Stray Bullets crime comics, one of the most ambitious and compelling (and most highly respected) series of the last decade or so, a sprawling sequence of loosely linked vignettes that trace the damage that the stray bullets of violence and crime wreak on the innocent and guilty alike. He explores that same theme, to memorable and powerful effect, in Silverfish. Alas, Stray Bullets has been missing in action for the last few years. But I tell you, if Lapham’s taking time off from that to craft the occasional masterpiece like this, he’s more than forgiven. -- Kevin Burton Smith

Sovereign by C.J. Sansom (Viking) 592 pages
No fan of historical mysteries, I was particularly likely to cast a cold eye at the well-worn subgenre of British historical mysteries. But when I started reading C.J. Sansom’s Sovereign, I fell hard. It’s the third entry in the author’s Matthew Shardlake series, picking up the story of the hunchback London attorney as his loyalty to reformer Oliver Cromwell continues to wane. Now it’s fear rather than admiration of Cromwell’s growing power that compels the lawyer’s agreement to travel to York to ensure the safety of an imprisoned conspirator waiting to be transported back to London. The timing of Shardlake’s journey is particular delicate: York, only recently brought under the banner of King Henry VIII, is making elaborate preparations to receive the monarch and his huge entourage (called The Progress) that includes his most recent young wife, Queen Catherine. Steering clear of the affected prose that mars so many historical mysteries, Sansom lays out plots and subplots that wind around like the cobblestone streets through a medieval old town, putting Shardlake and his young assistant, Jack Barak, on ever more treacherous footing. When a master craftsman working on preparations for the king’s visit dies in a gruesome fall, Shardlake suspects murder; his investigation turns up evidence of yet another conspiracy to overthrow the king. And when Barak takes up with one of the ladies of the royal party (or was she dispatched to seduce him?), Shardlake is plunged deep into court intrigue that leads him right to the fearsome Tower of London. Sansom makes the religious and political issues of Tudor England as easy to understand, and as troubling to watch, as the forces that shape the society we live in today. But the strength of the book lies in the character of Shardlake. The barrister’s physical deformity has always set him apart from the mainstream, giving him time to develop talents as an observer. The passion for fairness and reform that originally made him a follower of Cromwell leaves him increasingly out of step with the politicians around him. In short, Shardlake’s an ideal detective. And that makes him a very dangerous person in an environment seething with conspiracies. Sovereign is replete with seamy settings, cold-blooded betrayal and torture (as well as a very mysterious series of suicide attempts that Shardlake figures out brilliantly). It has scenes that make contemporary hard-boiled crime fiction seem quaint and stylized. Which is not to say that it’s without its own moments of wry humor. The description of the arrival of King Henry at York (“God’s anointed on earth”) with rows of perspiring dignitaries waiting hours to greet him, told from the viewpoint of Shardlake, concludes with a description of those same dignitaries bolting towards a row of outdoor privies after their long ordeal. One thing’s for certain: After reading Sovereign, you’ll be far less likely to associate the adjective “Tudor” with the genre “Romance.” -- Karen G. Anderson

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster) 368 pages
This is a novel that shouldn’t have worked. Not at all. First off, it has no plot. Well, there is one, but it’s incredibly thin. What it does have, though, is character. Izzy Spellman is the oldest daughter in a clan of P.I.s. The Spellman Files is about a family, as dysfunctional as any regular family, except that in this family of criminal investigators, they take dysfunctional to a whole new level where they bug the rooms of family members, discreetly tail them to see who they’re dating or what they’re doing, and even set up the basement to look like a police interrogation room for when one of the younger Spellmans causes trouble -- and when a Spellman causes trouble, he or she does it in style, believe me. The Spellman Files is one of those novels that could easily have easily been a mess and gotten away from its author. The cast here is extensive, the quirk factor is huge, and Files has a framing device that finds Izzy telling someone else stories about her family. I was waiting for it to go off the rails, and the novel does come dangerously close a few times, but debut author Lisa Lutz reins it in with a wonderful human touch every so often, and it’s that humanity that sets this book apart from so many other quirky mystery works. I love the characters, from her parents (a modern take on Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles, if they had ever settled down and started a family P.I. business) to Uncle Lou, who likes to drink, smoke cigars and gamble a lot (he actually adds a great deal of drama to this tale, because he disappears on a regular basis during what the family refers to as “Lost Weekends,” and it’s up to somebody in the clan to track him down again). The black sheep among these relations is actually the most well-adjusted. Izzy’s brother David successfully started a new life outside the business as a corporate lawyer, but he still has a hand in the family’s affairs by throwing business their way. My favorite player, though, is Izzy’s 14-year-old sister, Rae. She has yet to become as jaded as Izzy, but she doesn’t want to follow David’s lead and leave the family. There’s an interesting internal tug of war for her soul, as she goes through the normal activities of being a teenage girl, dealing with homework and mean teachers and bullies -- and, of course, blackmailing her family to get out of going to Summer Camp. The Spellman Files is a wonderfully human family saga, with a great sense of humor and heart, not to mention intelligence. I hope Lutz enjoys a long and successful career. -- Cameron Hughes

The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster) 384 pages
After Hurricane Katrina clobbers New Orleans in the summer of 2005, New Iberia Parish Detective Dave Robicheaux is put on “lend-lease” to the flooded and chaotic Louisiana metropolis. With most of the New Orleans Police Department force deserting, or committing crimes themselves, Robicheaux is assigned to pursue cases he’d rather ignore, and becomes caught up in personal circumstances he can’t put aside. While patrolling the ravaged streets with Sheriff Helen Soileau, the hurricane’s aftermath deposits images in Robicheaux’s mind that he will “never” forget. Of the 16 Robicheaux books so far, this one is the most poignant love song to the city Burke calls “the great Whore of Babylon.” At the heart of the tale is Robicheaux’s search for a missing friend, a junkie priest named Jude LeBlanc. LeBlanc was last seen heading out in a rowboat to rescue trapped parishioners. But that search competes with Robicheaux’s investigation of the shooting death of a teenage African-American looter, whose killer may be a prosperous white insurance company executive. Knowing that state authorities are going to make a shining example of that executive, Robicheaux urges him to find “a good lawyer.” The creeps in Tin Roof are prime examples of the vilest of characters, and it’s bad guys with biblical-mythological derivations that Burke excels at depicting. The key to helping Robicheaux solve the teenager’s murder is none other than “street puke” Bertrand Melancon, whose ulcer is a metaphor for his rotting soul. Like a gust of wind blowing off the bayou, the enduring pain of ruptured southern Louisiana, “peeled” from the face of the earth, pervades Tin Roof. Robicheaux is a damaged man in many ways, but sidekick Clete Purcel matches him in reckless behavior. In these pages, Purcel is initially hot on the trail of two “bail skips,” but when blood diamonds are stolen during the looting, Purcel is thrust into the center of their recovery. Purcel careens through this book in a heat-induced craze, the booze percolating through his veins, the senseless murder of a friend fueling his actions. Purcel’s pain and loss are just as great as Robicheaux’s, though he’s less verbally reflective about it. Thankfully, its Robicheaux’s -- and Burke’s poetic voice that tells this marvelous and moving yarn. -- Anthony Rainone

Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace (Faber and Faber UK) 368 pages
This may well be the most-reviewed novel of 2007. A series of rape-homicides in the collapsing moments of World War II-era Japan send Detective Minami on an investigation that ranges far beyond the crimes at hand. The aftermath of war and defeat has trapped him in a nightmare. Author David Peace takes a page from James Ellroy, using a staccato, repetitious style that conveys the urgency and desperation of Tokyo in 1946. You either love this book, or you hate it. I loved it. It’s the most surreal police procedural I have ever read, not only because of the presentation but the setting. Tokyo is destroyed, Tokyo is being rebuilt. Life goes on, but families are searching for missing loved ones, buildings are uninhabitable and entire districts are razed in the wartime firestorms. The main character, Minami, shivers and shakes, itches and scratches through his encounters with the Kompetai (Japan’s military police), the new rules imposed by the victorious Americans and a shakeup in the local police bureau. His fear and anxiety are the novel’s focus expressed through a drumbeat of heat, reconstruction, a mad killer and a new beginning. -- David Thayer

12:23: Paris. 31st August 1997 by Eion McNamee (Faber and Faber UK) 304 pages
As a lover of conspiracy thrillers, I was awaiting Irish novelist-screenwriter McNamee’s 12:23 as I would a missing lung, especially as I had met the author several years ago when he was presented with the inaugural Crime Writers’ Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for The Sirius Crossing (written he penned under the nom de plume “John Creed”). I probably could have read this new novel in well under two hours, as it is slim in terms of page-count; but it is a big book in terms of ideas, literary style and the atmosphere it can conjure in one’s head. Consequently, I was forced to read more slowly than usual, in order to absorb every word, every sentence into my fevered mind. The premise of 12:23 is that several international spies, connected with assorted agencies and working both officially and not-so-officially, converge upon the French capital during the summer of 1997 to watch fate unfold for Princess Diana, referred to in this text simply as “Spencer,” her family’s surname. Rumors have spread that she is pregnant with a child spawned by her lover, Dodi-al-Fayed, whom the agents call “The Arab,” that label carrying a whiff of racism engendered by the dark figures who seem connected here to Britain’s “establishment.” Further complications arise, as talk spreads that Spencer is going to deliver a speech in which she sides with the Arab Palestinians in their ongoing conflict against Israel. McNamee even manages to implicate members of the Solar Temple cult (a secret society linked to the ancient Knights Templar) in his plot, along with shadowy representatives from a cabal of international arms traders who are concerned that Spencer is eroding the market for landmines. And what would a British espionage novel be without involvement by the French? 12:23 offers a bit of that too. However, it’s the interactions between members of a unit of low-level British spies that drives this narrative so forcefully forward. As in another UK thriller set in Paris, The Day of the Jackal (1971), we know in 12:23 the outcome of the story before it commences. Yet, like Frederick Forsyth, Eoin McNamee captivates us as he sends his characters toward a brutal and disturbing climax. McNamee writes like a magician, with an abundance of smoke and silvery mirrors shielding the truth until the end, when he rolls up his sleeves to reveal his fictional take on the death of Diana, which like a landmine was hidden in plain sight. Like the elusive white Fiat Uno that was allegedly involved in the fatal car accident, the plot concludes here with an alarming number of people having vanished. 12:23 ought to be a very strong contender for next year’s CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. -- Ali Karim

The Unquiet by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton UK) 480 pages
Irish writer Connolly’s The Unquiet is a dark and dangerous literary journey that starts with a feeling of dread, and just builds and builds, until the tension becomes unbearable. If you haven’t previously been introduced to Charlie Parker, this author’s Maine-based private eye (last seen in The Black Angel, 2005), then this novel is a great place to start in the series. The Unquiet finds Parker looking back into the past -- both his and others’ -- to find redemption and atonement for past sins, some of which may never be completely forgiven. We find Parker in these pages no less melancholic than he’s been before, hearing the voices of his deceased first wife and daughter, and trying to find peace with his new, estranged wife, Rachel, and their daughter. To break his morose mood, he takes on what looks like a simple job: protecting a woman named Rebecca Clay and her daughter from a mysterious stalker. In Parker’s world, however, nothing is ever simple. His adventures inevitably contain supernatural aspects, because for this P.I., the world of the living always intersects with the world of the dead, and past sins are propelled into the future. It seems that the stalker harassing Rebecca Clay and her child is an underworld hit man by the name of Frank Merrick, who’s working for a lawyer called Eldritch (an apparent homage to American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft). Together, the men are attempting to trace Rebecca’s father, the child psychologist Dr. Daniel Clay, a man whose career was ruined by whispers of pedophilia, and who subsequently vanished in disgrace. This assignment proves troublesome, so Parker calls upon Louis and Angel, his rough-and-tough sidekicks, as well as Jackie Garner and his bodyguards, Tony and Paulie Fulci, to protect Ms. Clay from Merrick, while Parker probes further into the hit man’s motives. Our hero soon discovers much more amiss than he had expected. It appears Merrick’s young daughter went missing at the same time as Daniel Clay vanished (and while Merrick was still in prison). There’s also evidence that the children Clay was involved with drew pictures of their abusers, all wearing sinister bird-masks. We’re told as well that along the Maine-Canada border rests an abandoned community known as Gilead -- a place Dr. Clay was known to visit, but that was abandoned after it was discovered that ritual child abuse had taken place there. Parker soon finds connections to members of Boston’s Russian mafia, who traffic in children, Internet child abuse and murder. As this story develops further, Parker and Merrick both hear voices from the dead, voices that are hollow, voices belonging to people who no longer walk the earth. And into that potent and chilling mix comes the cigarette-smoking avenger known as “The Collector,” who inquires of Parker: “You think you are a good man?” and continues, “How can one tell the good from the bad when their methods are just the same?” The Unquiet is among the finest reads of this or any other year. I was simultaneously enthralled and terrified. But it’s the wit Connolly harnesses to his fiction that prevents his dark tales from overwhelming readers with malevolence. -- Ali Karim

Walla Walla Suite (A Room With No View) by Anne Argula (Ballantine Books) 272 pages
There were two big disappointments for me in Walla Walla Suite. One has nothing at all to do with story, but was due to the fact that, late in enjoying the first novel I’d read from this author, and thinking I’d found a woman writer with a strong voice who I hadn’t encountered before, I discovered that Argula is actually a well-known male screenwriter named Daryl Ponicsan (Cinderella Liberty, The Last Detail). The other disappointment was that, for me, three quarters of this book was like listening to new music -- easy, pleasurable, sometimes unexpected -- but in the end, the story didn’t quite hold together, sagging under the weight of overly complicated plotting. Still: here I am, selecting it as one of my best reads of the year simply because, when all was said and done, I loved this book. I loved the Seattle setting, I loved the main character’s quirky way of talking and her hot-flashes-driven view of the world. I loved the language of the book: noir in modern drag. The rapid-fire rat-tat-tat of old-time storytellers, combined with the beautiful punctures of well-placed metaphor. OK: the story could have been slightly better. There’s a killer, of course. A dead girl who everyone loved. For a while our protagonist is in danger. The culprit, when she finds him out, is unexpected. So the story could have been stronger, more weightily hinged. But the journey? For me the journey through Walla Walla Suite was second to not very much. And I’ll follow this writer through more of them, regardless of the name on the cover. -- Linda L. Richards

The Watchman by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster) 304 pages
Technically, this is the first Joe Pike novel, though fans of Crais’ Elvis Cole private-eye series are well acquainted with the hard-charging former Los Angeles police officer and world-ranging mercenary. Pike’s steadfast morality and single-purpose zeal are once again put to the test in The Watchman, this time protecting Larkin Connor Barkley, a wealthy young California socialite whose life is in danger, following a seemingly innocuous traffic accident. Barkley is a hot 22-year-old, suffering as a result of lack of attention from her multi-billionaire father. Barkley likes to live and drive fast, and when her Aston Martin smacks a silver Mercedes sedan, her life is turned upside down. The three occupants of the Mercedes survive and inexplicably flee the scene. Shortly afterwards, several attempts are made on Larkin’s life. The U.S. Department of Justice steps in, and Barkley identifies one of the occupants of the Mercedes as Alexander Liman Meesh, a known murderer and money launderer for a South American drug cartel. The feds suspect that Meesh is behind the attacks on the willowy Ms. Barkley. But the feds seem congenitally incapable of protecting this wild child, so Pike is summoned to help. Nobody writes action sequences better than Crais, and the unfolding drama of Pike fighting off the bad guys here is sheer exhilaration. Also, nobody is better than Pike at making villains wish they were never born. The former marine boasts the skills and discipline that Meesh’s band of South American thrill-killers lack. This contest isn’t even close to being fair. Meesh does have one advantage, though: someone on the inside is leaking Barkley’s location to the bad guys every time she moves to a new safe house. The Watchman gives us a chance to know Joe Pike better than we did before -- to hear more about his mercenary jobs in places like Africa, his abusive father and his career as an LAPD officer. In the past, Elvis Cole has often relied on Joe Pike to watch his back, but this time around, it’s Pike who needs the assistance of The World’s Greatest Detective. The relationship between Pike and Barkley is touching and grows close over time, though never intimate. Pike doesn’t so much undergo a transformation in this novel, as he is deepened as a protagonist. Joe Pike is willfully capable of inflicting pain, or killing villains without remorse, and the hard-edged, kick-ass warrior emerges from these pages ready to do battle with the next batch of bad guys who come along. I pity them already. -- Anthony Rainone

What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman (William Morrow and Company) 384 pages
Full disclosure: My name appears in this novel’s acknowledgments for technical assistance, and the author managed to twist an anecdote involving yours truly into something even funnier than what really happened. But the basic plot is this: Two sisters disappear from a suburban shopping mall one summer in the mid-1970s. Thirty years later, the victim of a car accident in Baltimore claims to be Sunny Bethany, the younger of those siblings. But is she? That’s what Detective Kevin Infante intends to find out. He’s a womanizing wreck of a man who at least doesn’t have the drinking problems of Jimmy McNulty (from HBO’s The Wire). While What the Dead Know could easily have been the latest in a series about Baltimore County cops Infante and Nancy Porter (of Every Secret Thing fame), it’s not. Still, Porter is along for the ride in this one, with Sergeant Harold Lenhart standing behind them to plant a boot in Infante’s butt from time to time. However, this, like Every Secret Thing and To the Power of Three before it, is a standalone, with a familiar set of characters in place more for familiarity than continuity. The real story is Sunny’s. Or rather the woman Sunny has been for the past four years. It’s about Sunny’s mother, a pleasant Stepford mom who escapes her loveless marriage after her children vanish. It’s about Sunny and Heather Bethany and their transformation from typical suburban girls to urban legends. Lippman deftly juggles four different stories -- Sunny’s life in hiding, her childhood with her sister, their mother’s recovery from losing her girls and Infante’s own mid-life crisis -- mainly by not staying in any one timeframe long enough to reveal too much about each character. The shifts in point of view and setting are seamless and let Lippman’s skill as a writer shine. It’s the latest step in her transformation as a novelist, which began with 2002’s The Last Place. Lippman has always been a good writer. This book proves she is a great one. -- Jim Winter

Whitewash by Alex Kava (MIRA Books) 432 pages
Set in the dual locations of Florida and Washington, D.C., Kava’s multi-layered novel focuses on the central topic of alternative-fuels development, and features an alternating cast of characters culled from the worlds of science, politics and international intelligence. If you never thought the environment could be riveting, you obviously haven’t read Whitewash. Dr. Dwight Lansik is the head scientist for EcoEnergy, an alternative-fuel production facility nestled near the Apalachicola Forest outside of Tallahassee, Florida. Lansik devises a formula using feedstock -- in this case, chicken guts, heads and lungs -- that is heated at extremely high temperatures. There are several individuals who hope to take advantage of EcoEnergy’s breakthrough feedstock process. One of those is Senator John Quincy Allen, from the state of Florida. Allen has been escorting EcoEnergy through the Byzantine channels of D.C. politics, and giving it special attention in the Senate Appropriations Committee. He hopes not only to earn recognition as a front-runner on environmental issues, but also to secure a $140 million contract to supply the U.S. military with fuel. If successful, Allen can write his own political future. Meanwhile, Jason Brill is Allen’s hardworking and underappreciated chief of staff. While Brill engages in a one-night stand with Lindsay Matthews, the chief of staff for Allen’s senatorial adversary, in D.C.’s Washington Grand Hotel, a gay senatorial aide is brutally murdered in that same hotel. Brill presently finds himself a suspect in the eyes of investigating detectives, after police discover that the two men knew each other. And while all of this is going on, workaholic Dr. Lansik goes missing, and Dr. Sabrina Galloway, a staff scientist at EcoEnergy, becomes suspicious. When she notices that Reactor #5 is processing Grade 2 materials -- plastics and metals, even though EcoEnergy is not set up yet to safely process those materials -- she brings it to the plant engineer’s attention. Galloway’s powers of observation are not welcome. Someone runs her off the road one night, and she nearly dies. Later, when a fellow scientist is mistaken for Galloway and brutally murdered, Galloway doesn’t need further provocation. She packs up and flees Tallahassee. There’s a lot going on in Whitewash, which explains its more than 400 pages of length; but that expansiveness doesn’t give it room to drag. Whitewash is a rock-solid, imaginative thriller. -- Anthony Rainone

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins) 432 pages
Alternative history scenarios can be fascinating to spin out within the safety of fiction. How, for instance, might the past have been changed, had the Spanish Armada defeated the English fleet in 1588? What would have happened, had the Russian Revolution never happened, or the South had won the U.S. Civil War, or Adolf Hitler had been assassinated in 1944, or a World War II-era plan to resettle Jewish refugees from Europe in the Territory of Alaska been successful? Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Final Solution and other novels, tackles that final “what if” in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, a thoughtful reconsideration of Jewish identity cleverly disguised as a detective novel. Apparently, during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, there were plans floated to bring displaced Jews from Nazi Germany to sparsely settled Alaska. That scheme eventually foundered in Congress, and the fleeing Jews instead found what they fervently hoped was sanctuary in Palestine. But like Philip Roth, who, in The Plot Against America (2004), played with the scenario of famed aviator and supposed Nazi sympathizer Charles Lindbergh beating FDR in the 1940 U.S. presidential race, Chabon considers what might have come to pass had that Alaskan resettlement scheme been executed. In The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, it’s the 21st century, and the government of Alaska determines to reassert its hegemony over the Federal District of Sitka, which it always considered a “temporary” Jewish home. For the Yiddish-speaking Sitkans, though, who for 60 years thought they were safe, this is yet another unwanted and unfair eviction, and there’s no telling where they’ll go next. In the midst of the upheaval, a burnt-out homicide cop named Meyer Landsman investigates the murder of a chess-playing, junkie neighbor, who may or may not be the Messiah. Landsman sees in this case his path to a love-overdue redemption, but others -- including underworld rabbis and his ex-wife, who also happens to be his new boss -- see him as a pain in the ass and a troublemaker, and want him stopped. Chabon has a lot of fun, dropping in allusions to twists in history that never actually got twisted (he mentions at one point former first lady “Marilyn Monroe Kennedy in her pink pillbox hat”) and playing with the rhythms of crime fiction (his prose can be positively Chandleresque at times). However, he has some thought-provoking things to say in these pages about whether history shapes people, or it’s the other way around. Although the Jews of Chabon’s fertile imagination have escaped their real-life rivalry with Palestinians, they are still challenged for their homeland--in this case, by Alaska’s Tlingit Indians, who don’t appreciate the refugees squatting on land that has historically belonged to them. Like the storied character, Flitcraft, in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, the Jews in Chabon’s tale haven’t found their lives all that changed by a change in environment. -- J. Kingston Pierce

(Part I can be found here.)

January Magazine’s Best Books of 2007

Most of us love lists. Sometimes we even love looking at lists when they don’t make a lot of sense to us and their methodology has not been explained. Here’s a list of the best places to live. The hottest spots to vacation. The best schools. The top breeds of dog. The best restaurants. The hippest place to get a fish taco. The... well, you get the idea.

Most of us love lists.

I’m not immune. I love them too. Yet sometimes, I find myself looking at them and wondering... why? Because, let’s face it, when all is said and done, this too is subjective. The best compared to what? How can you even have a best of without a worst of? And just because someone loves garlic pistachio ice cream does not make that the best flavor. Honestly, even if a whole lot of people loved garlic pistachio, you would not be able to convince me it was the best. Just saying so; just putting it in a list does not make it the best.

So all of this -- more -- and yet, here we are: I find myself once again proud and delighted to present to you the books the editors of January Magazine liked best in 2007.

This annual feature has gotten to be my favorite. Not just because we spend a lot of time making all these lists, though that’s a part of it. But the larger picture, in a way, is that all this busy list making, all of this looking back at the literary year that was, represents a very real celebration of reading and of books.

And because every publication seems to have their own method of selecting their annual bests, it seems useful to tell you about ours.

Here’s what we do: all of our contributors are asked to put together a short list of the books they liked best published in the calendar year under discussion. They write about them briefly. And then we tell you.

Collectively, January Magazine’s editors and contributors read thousands of books in 2007. We reported on quite a few of them. We review from almost all branches of the book industry and, as a result, our choices run the gamut.

The January Best of the Year list is not a popularity contest. Our choices reflect what our writers and editors liked best of the books they read and enjoyed throughout the year. They don’t need to qualify their choices. There is no board or panel. No quotas from certain publishers, no authors that had to be included. And though some of the books mentioned here were reviewed for January Magazine in 2007, that’s not part of the criterion. These are, quite simply, the books that our well read eyes and hearts liked best, listed in alphabetical order within the loose category in which they fall.

Because this year we had so much fun rolling out our Holiday Gift Guide over a number of days, we’re going to do the same with the Best of 2007. Starting here with the children’s books we liked best and working our way through the week through fiction, non-fiction, art & culture and crime fiction in two segments, A-I, by title, here and J-Z here.

We hope you enjoy our selections. Even more than that, we hope they inspire you to spend a little more time reading and enjoying books, this week and always.

Best Books of 2007: Crime Fiction, Part I

An Accidental American by Alex Carr (Random House Mortalis) 240 pages
This novel introduces Nicole Blake, an ex-con living a carefully compacted life in France. The daughter of an American grifter and a Lebanese mother, Nicole is a forger by trade, living in the shelter of the Pyrenees after a six-year stretch in a Marseilles prison. But when John Valsamis, a CIA officer, locates Nicole, the bottom drops out of her peaceful existence. He’s determined to take out Nicole’s former lover, terrorism suspect Rahim Ali, and then kill Nicole and enjoy his retirement from the Agency. She fouls his plan, however, by heading for Lisbon to find Rahim -- an act of betrayal and self-preservation that sets the tone for this novel’s bleak study of foreign policies’ unintended consequences. Nicole eludes Valsamis long enough for Carr’s yarn to emerge in full, and to return to its point of origin: Beirut, 1983 -- the year the U.S. Embassy there was attacked. An Accidental American is in part historical fiction, not by definition as much as inclination. 1983 is not that long ago, and the lingering effects of Lebanon’s civil war remain headline news. Alex Carr (a pseudonym of Jenny Siler) tells Nicole’s story in the first-person, rendering the woman’s mounting desperation by using flashbacks to her days with Rahim in Lisbon, to Beirut and Jounieh, the north coast Lebanese town in which her family sought safety as Beirut crumbled. Her life lacks the urgency of a present tense, despite the danger Valsamis presents. She is awakening while her nemesis sees the construct of his life unraveling, the two of them entwined in the machinations of Morrow, the CIA director who fears Nicole and controls Valsamis through shared treachery. Beirut, 1983, is the vector that draws all of them toward destruction, and by this novel’s end Nicole is left with the riddle of her childhood solved, a stateless and homeless refugee with a forged passport. An Accidental American demonstrates fiction’s power to follow a shard of glass from the great explosion, to examine its bloodstained edges and explore the passion, foolishness, tragedy and flawed humanity traced by its journey toward discovery. When examined through an artist’s eye, actions beyond understanding develop meaning, and in this novel, we learn how to decipher the language of war, its mismanaged intent and complex ramifications. The author reminds us that, like a child pulled from the debris of a collapsed building, the truth is a small thing in terrible jeopardy, praying to be found. -- David Thayer

The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator by Ross Macdonald, edited by Tom Nolan (Crippen & Landru) 360 pages
Canadian-American novelist Ross Macdonald had a penchant for keeping murder all in the family. He was obsessed with exploring the arcane bits and pieces of his characters’ familial histories and discovering how they continue to reverberate into, and have an impact on, the present. It’s only appropriate, then, that his prose should continue to have an impact, as well -- and it does, thanks most recently to The Archer Files, the compilation that detective and mystery fans (and anyone else who enjoys great writing, no matter the genre) have been waiting for so long to see. This attractive volume -- complete with a pulpy cover that deliberately recalls the original paperback jacket of an earlier Macdonald collection -- comprises not just all of the Lew Archer short stores from that previous collection, but it tosses in the handful of other stories that have appeared over the years, making this the first book to include all the stories featuring Macdonald’s world-weary private eye. Even better are the handful of unfinished but nonetheless tantalizing snippets that editor and Macdonald biographer Tom Nolan found while going through the late author’s files; bits and pieces of unfinished novels and short stories, brief character sketches and the like. (Would it surprise anyone to discover that perfectionist Macdonald’s rough cast-offs and discards still pack a powerful punch, or that they’re better than most writers’ polished, final drafts? Read “Heyday in the Blood,” one of those unfinished yarns -- featured in The Rap Sheet -- if you need proof.) But the real pièce de résistance is Nolan’s introductory biographical sketch of the fictional P.I., which he constructed from a careful, meticulous re-reading of every Archer novel, short story and snippet he could lay hands on. Illuminating and fascinating, it’s like finally getting the skinny on a guy you’ve known for years. And it makes this one book that any serious fan of the genre should love to explore. The modern era of private detective fiction started here. -- Kevin Burton Smith

Bad Luck and Trouble by Lee Child (Delacorte Press) 384 pages
One of Jack Reacher’s old army buddies, Calvin Franz, gets his legs broken and is flung out of a helicopter over a California desert, and left there for the vultures to pick over. This is a very bad move by the baddies, because the one guy you don’t want to mess with is a friend of Jack Reacher. In this latest Lee Child thriller, we have some more back story on Reacher as he reunites the surviving members of his old military police unit in order to hunt down Franz’s killers. Mix together the protagonist’s skill with mental arithmetic and his ability in the manufacturing of Molotov cocktails, and you have a classic adventure tale. Bad Luck and Trouble is far more violent then its predecessors, as Reacher is out for cold-blooded retribution. Traversing L.A. and Las Vegas, he and his old cohorts decide to take their revenge in the most violent way possible. Grab this book if you want bone-crunching action coupled with cerebral angst from the world’s biggest-selling living thriller writer. -- Ali Karim

Big City, Bad Blood by Sean Chercover (William Morrow and Company) 304 pages
A cynical private eye with a reporter pal and an antagonistic ally on the force. The Chicago Outfit. A client who isn’t everything he appears to be. A love interest who can’t handle our hero’s violent way of life. Heard it all before, right? Well, so has Sean Chercover, but it didn’t stop him from putting all those ingredients into his debut novel, Big City, Bad Blood. Chercover, though, has taken the clichés, tossed them into a blender and hit frappé. The result is not a pastiche, parody or retread of the classic P.I., but a reinvention of it. Meet Ray Dudgeon, a man who really wanted to be Bob Woodward when he grew up. After he found himself punished for reporting an inconvenient truth, he left journalism and applied his skills as a private investigator in Chicago. We meet Dudgeon as he goes to work for a location scout, Bob Loniski. Loniski found himself conned by a two-bit thug named Frank DiMarco, a loser running a property scam that snared Loniski and a lot of studio money. DiMarco, according to Dudgeon’s mob contacts, is nobody, so Dudgeon teaches him a lesson. But unbeknownst to Dudgeon or his mob contact, DiMarco just crawled into bed with an ambitious capo looking to move up in the Outfit. It’s the details that make this novel. The Outfit in Chercover’s world, just as in the real world, is composed of both Gotti-like loudmouths and staid businessmen who just happen to operate outside the law. Dudgeon is cynical, not because some dame with legs up to here walks in the door once too often, but because his former profession has left a bad taste in his mouth. Particularly well-done is the Christmas Eve encounter Dudgeon has with a fading movie star (perhaps based on V.I. Warshawski’s Kathleen Turner?). And if that’s not enough, read the book for the real star of the show, that being the city of Chicago. -- Jim Winter

The Big O by Declan Burke (Hag’s Head) 288 pages
Irish wordsmith Burke took a huge gamble on his second crime novel (after Eight Ball Boogie, 2003), splitting the costs of publishing it with Dublin indie house Hag’s Head Press -- “a 50-50 costs and profits deal,” as the author describes the negotiation. Fortunately, that gamble appears to have paid off, with American house Harcourt agreeing to release Burke’s book in the States next fall and The Big O being shortlisted for one of the inaugural Spinetingler Awards. Although Burke has done a yeoman’s job of publicizing his work, it takes more than self-promotion to make a success -- and unquestionably, The Big O is a big ol’ success, a tale fueled by the mischievous spirits of Donald E. Westlake, Elmore Leonard and even Carl Hiaasen, but not slavishly imitating any of their works. The premise is simple: Frank is an incompetent plastic surgeon who wants to make a few extra bucks off his ex-wife, Madge, while she’s still covered by his insurance policy. The idea is to have her professionally kidnapped, then collect the insurance payoff and live a little happier ever after than he had expected to before, with a younger girlfriend. But as with most comic capers, when things go wrong, they go wrong in a fucked-up-royal way. Turns out that the guy tapped to snatch the aforementioned Madge is Ray Brogan, a painter who babysits people for kidnap gangs. Coincidentally, Ray has fallen recently for Karen, a motorcycle-riding bank robber in her spare time, who also happens -- get this -- to be the aforementioned Frank’s office assistant. Further contributing to the delightful confusion in The Big O is that the lovely Karen’s former partner, the style-challenged Rossi Francis Assisi Callaghan, has just been released from prison and is determined to get his money, gun and motorbike back from Karen. Naturally, every fool inhabiting these pages decides that he or she can get a larger piece of the action by scamming the scammers at their own game. So, do I have to point out the screeching, smoking wheels to make it clear that a train wreck is in the offing? Author Burke must keep a lot of balls in the air for this tale to work, but he makes it look easy, switching points of view frequently and maintaining a high level of tension that should have been harder to pull off than it seems. I’m not usually a fan of comic crime fiction, preferring the darker variety. But The Big O kept me reading at speed -- and laughing the whole damn time. -- J. Kingston Pierce

The Blade Itself by Marcus Sakey (St. Martin’s) 320 pages
If you want to know what the once-and-future noir Webzine Plots With Guns is all about, check out Marcus Sakey’s The Blade Itself. Protag Danny Carter is as doomed as doomed can be, and only Sakey’s fellow author Jason Starr (The Follower) manages to light a bigger fire under his characters. Carter is a successful construction manager in Chicago. He has a violent past, but when a pawnshop robbery went wrong, sending his best friend, Evan McGann, to prison, Carter walked away from that life and made something more of himself. He’s gone from a liquor store-robbing thug to a man with a fiancée and a boss who considers him almost a son. Too bad Evan can’t see past the next score. Finally out of prison, he finds Danny, finds out about his boss and decides Carter owes him one last job. And if all goes wrong, Carter’s world is destroyed. While Sakey has spurred comparisons to Laura Lippman and Dennis Lehane, I see more of the aforementioned Mr. Starr and “Tartan noir” master Allan Guthrie (Hard Man) in his story. Nobody’s as dark as Starr these days, but Sakey makes Danny Carter march through that same grimness. Sakey takes the premise of “There, but for the grace of God, go I” and beats it with a hammer. While Carter is a disturbingly familiar character -- if he doesn’t stare back at you in the mirror, he’s probably in line behind you at Starbucks -- it is Evan who drives this tale. Evan has spent seven years in prison building up nothing but hate for himself. His entire world has narrowed to only him, and everyone around him is merely disposable. It all ties back to that night in the pawnshop, when Evan drew a gun to demonstrate that he was in control, only to kill a man. Control is all Evan is about now, and his fate is rather fitting. Of all the “Killer Year” authors, Sakey is perhaps the darkest. -- Jim Winter

The Chopin Manuscript edited by Jim Fusilli; contributing authors Jeffery Deaver, Lisa Scottoline, Erica Spindler, Peter Spiegelman, Joseph Finder, James Grady, Ralph Pezzullo, John Ramsey Miller, Jim Fusilli, David Corbett, David Hewson, John Gilstrap, S.J. Rozan, P.J. Parrish and Lee Child (Audible.com)
The Chopin Manuscript audiobook is the collective effort of 15 authors working sequentially on furthering a plot line initiated by Jeffery Deaver. It is a remarkable achievement of collaboration in both scope and execution. Chopin runs to 17 chapters, with most averaging roughly 24 minutes long. Deaver sets the roiling pace with his opening chapter, and the succeeding authors produce layered segments of plot, setting, character and motivation. It is an extraordinary and entertaining achievement. This story’s plot revolves around main protagonist Harold Middleton, a 56-year-old former U.S. Army colonel and ex-member of a United Nations intelligence team that hunted war criminals in Yugoslavia. Middleton is also a recognized musicologist, currently on a trip to Poland. After Henrik Jedanok, a Polish piano tuner and music collector, gives Middleton a manuscript by 19th-century composer Frédéric Chopin for inspection -- a manuscript that Middleton is convinced must be a forgery -- several murders occur that seem related to that manuscript. Polish police investigator Josef Padlow believes Middleton might be in danger too, and the American races back to the States, fearing for the welfare of his married, pregnant daughter, Charlotte Middleton Perez. Much of the main action thereafter occurs in the United States, primarily in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland. But significant developments also occur in Italy and Africa, giving a strong international flavor to this serial thriller. With a multitude of robust writing talents involved in this project, the characters pitted against Middleton are rendered in complex and diabolical fashion: Faust is the main antagonist, a man who aided Yugoslavian war criminal Rugova (his code name, Faust, was given him by Middleton’s intelligence team); Eleana Sobersky is Faust’s wily and very deadly cohort; and Rukavshin is a brutal murderer. Besides Charlotte and Harold Middleton being in danger, Felicia Kaminsky, the musician niece of Jedanok the piano tuner, and Charlotte’s husband, Jack Perez, also face harm at the hands of the vengeful Faust. Of course, there are plenty of law-enforcement types hovering around Middleton and this tale’s increasing number of bodies. M.T. Connelly is an FBI agent with good cop instincts; Emmitt Kallenbach at first appears to be nothing more than a paper-pushing administrative feebie, but under the pen of subsequent writers, he develops more muscle. At the heart of The Chopin Manuscript lie musical treasures that were stolen by the Nazis during World War II, and a heretofore unknown musical score that has significant modern-day implications. For a work of such diverse contributions, the whole of Chopin is virtually seamless. A bravura performance. -- Anthony Rainone

The Color of Blood by Declan Hughes (William Morrow and Company) 352 pages
Last year, I tagged Irish playwright Declan Hughes debut novel, The Wrong Kind of Blood, as one of my favorite books of 2006. His latest, The Color of Blood, is even better. It brings back Ed Loy who, having returned to his native Dublin, Ireland, after 25 years in Los Angeles, where he worked as a private investigator, has decided to stay. But if there’s a truism in Hughes’ books, it’s that you can’t go home again. Or at least not easily. And blood always tells. The Color of Blood is, to put it bluntly, an audacious, full-blooded scream in the night, a bruising, ferocious assault on the evil that families do, a Ross Macdonald novel turned up to 11. A well-known and respected dentist, himself the son of an even more well-known and respected doctor, hires Loy to track down his 19-year-old daughter, whose appearance in a series of pornographic films is being used as a blackmail threat against the wealthy and image-conscious dentist. The girl is found easily enough, but her return to the bosom of her family seems to set off a chain of events that will soon tear that family’s comfortable, privileged lifestyle apart. Before he’s done, Hughes will wind into his yarn Ed’s ill-advised but torrid affair with his client’s sister, a string of murders stretching back 20 years, abandoned children, murders, drownings, organized crime, real-estate scams, incest, child abuse and plenty of alcohol; an unflinching critique of the Americanization of Ireland and the secrecy of the Catholic Church; and all the dirty perverted family secrets, past and present, that anyone could ever want. But it’s the breathtaking conclusion of The Color of Blood that brings it all home. There’s no surrender and no quarter given; it’s a prolonged pummeling as each piece of the Byzantine plot snaps firmly and finally into place, every new revelation another blow to the reader. This story, though, is no mere wallow in the trough -- Declan Hughes has set his sights high, aiming for the lofty literary heights of a Macdonald. And damn, if he doesn’t succeed. In spades. -- Kevin Burton Smith

The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz (Viking) 320 pages
Drew Danner is a Los Angeles-based crime-fiction writer, who is charged with the murder of his ex-fiancée, Genevieve Bertrand, after he’s found by the police lying over the young woman’s body, holding the murder weapon in his hands. The only problem is, Danner can’t remember committing the murder, because he suffered a brain seizure at the crime scene, and his recollection of the event has been lost. Danner is subsequently operated on and survives, but then he has to face trial for murdering his French lover, with both the prosecutors and police convinced that Danner is using his illness as an excuse to get away with homicide. He is eventually found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, but that doesn’t satisfy the distraught and confused mystery novelist. He has to know if he really did kill Genevieve, or if circumstances are as his gut instinct is telling him -- that someone else did it. Gregg Hurwitz has written seven previous novels and has consistently produced work of exceptional quality, The Crime Writer perhaps being the pinnacle of that output thus far. The author paints an L.A. setting of wealth and flash, from the multimillion-dollar homes on Mulholland Drive, to the trendy clubs in Santa Monica that serve more than 100 different types of vodka. But scratch the sun-drenched surface and you’ll find disillusionment and pathos beneath. With virtually no one believing in his innocence, Danner embarks on a painful journey along the razor-edge line between truth and justice. He has a conscience, even though he’s a pulp writer with Hollywood aspirations. Bad dreams and memory flashbacks plague him, and strange things are happening to him -- he wakes up and finds his foot is mysteriously cut, and the surgically removed brain tumor he took home as a keepsake suddenly disappears. Danner wonders if he is losing his mind, and he trains the lens of a video camera on himself at bedtime, in an effort to capture his nocturnal actions. After another young woman dies in circumstances similar to those that took Genevieve, and the recovered evidence seemingly points to Danner again, things take an urgent, darker tone. With ex-baseball player and good friend Chic Bales helping him, Danner sifts through the evidence -- most importantly, anesthetics administered to the most recently murdered woman -- and uncovers a diabolical motivation behind these killings. Is it clear yet why The Crime Writer is one of my favorite reads of the year? -- Anthony Rainone

Croaked! by Dick Lochte (Five Star) 385 pages
Set in Southern California in the 1960s, the fast-moving Croaked! almost qualifies as a historical mystery -- a semi-historical, maybe, that’s completely convincing and totally amusing. Harry Trauble, an Arkansas transplant, is a new hire in the promotions department at Ogle, a Playboy-style magazine devoted to “the masculine pleasure principle” (not to be confused, of course, with Playboy, where Edgar nominee and Nero Wolfe Award winner Lochte once worked). Ogle’s publisher is one Trower J. Buckley, whose egocentric and hedonistic “philosophy” is starting to alarm some of his more level-headed employees -- as when Buckley insists on going ahead with a company soirée after the suspicious deaths of several Ogle underlings. “The party suggests we’re beyond such mundane matters as sorrow or worry or fear,” the boss argues. “We’re on this planet to enjoy ourselves. How did Christ put it, Al?”

“I’m not sure which quote you’re thinking of, Buck.”

“The one about pleasure being the be-all and the end-all.”

“That doesn’t sound much like Jesus ... Possibly Epicurus. Or Ba’al.”

“No matter ... It’s the thought that counts.”

With Ogle’s founder-guru ensconced in Cloud Cuckoo-Land, it’s up to Trauble and a few other, saner pleasure-seekers to suss out who’s decimating Ogle’s ranks and why. Croaked! blends suspense with humor in a mix that’s pure Lochte -- with enough ring-a-ding-ding ’60s shenanigans to make you wish you were there, or glad that you were. -- Tom Nolan

The Dark Streets by John Shannon (Pegasus Books) 287 pages
What does John Shannon have to do to get some love from book buyers? Clearly, being responsible for one of the finest series of detective novels ever set in Los Angeles isn’t enough. No, Shannon’s hard, lean prose can’t compare with the soaring poetry and bruised romanticism of Raymond Chandler, or the psychological hand-wringing of Ross Macdonald. Or the contemporary noir-black outsider rage of Walter Mosley, or the heart-on-his-sleeve cinematic
testosterone of Robert Crais, for that matter. But what Shannon does better than anyone is “get” Los Angeles -- all of Los Angeles -- right. The Dark Streets -- it’s weakest aspect may be its rather generic title -- finds Jack Liffey, the dogged and dog-eared finder of lost children, on yet another wandering-daughter job, tracking down yet another troubled teenager and exploring yet one more segment of the melting pot that refuses to melt. Soon-Lin Kim, a young film student and activist, the “good daughter” of an ambitious and successful Korean-American businessman, has vanished. She had been working on a documentary film about several elderly local women, all Korean immigrants, all facing eviction, many of them having once been forced to serve as “comfort women” by Japanese invaders during the Second World War. In an ironic twist, the hotel-turned-boardinghouse that the women live in has been purchased and slated for demolition by Daeshin, the very same Korean global conglomerate whose corporate beginnings date back to the war and a possible clandestine collaboration with the Japanese occupying forces. But this isn’t the only ironic twist in The Dark Streets. Or the only troubled teenager. Liffey’s always-impulsive daughter, 17-year-old Maeve, has reached puberty -- with a vengeance -- and becomes obsessed with East L.A. gang culture, and in particular, the handsome cholo who lives next door. The ultimate twist here, however, comes when Jack himself goes missing. As always, Shannon cuts deep and fearlessly into the soft white underbelly of Los Angeles, exposing the dirty little secrets and day-to-day lives of its citizens. Given its overlapping plot lines and sprawling narrative, The Dark Streets should be a big, bleak mess of a book, all heartbreak and shallow cynicism and chaotic loose ends and a checklist of hollow talking points; but Shannon instead pulls it off with his usual wit, compassion and economy, never short-changing the humanity of his characters -- or his readers. Ambitious, intelligent, provocative and ballsy as all get out, Shannon -- possibly the best-kept secret in crime fiction -- deserves more readers. Give him some love. -- Kevin Burton Smith

Dead Connection by Alafair Burke (Henry Holt) 336 pages
I liked Alafair Burke’s first three novels -- Judgment Calls (2004), Missing Justice (2004) and Close Case (2005) -- just fine. All three featured an engaging Oregon-based assistant district attorney protagonist who got herself into tight situations that were well-written enough that when I heard Burke’s fourth book, Dead Connection, featured a whole new set of characters, I was oddly disappointed. However, that disappointment didn’t last even through the first chapter, because where all of Burke’s Samantha Kincaid novels were very, very good, her new book featuring a New York City cop named Ellie Hatcher is even better. Dead Connection is a little darker than Burke’s earlier works, a little sharper and as intricate and tightly wound as anything you’re likely to see. What I liked best was watching Burke trot out some of the things that have gotten to be standard fodder in female-protagonist crime fiction and twist and alter the beast until what she ended up with was very fresh and very different. As Dead Connection opens, Ellie has been a detective for a little more than a year. She’s quite happily working scams and robberies, when she’s surprised by a special temporary assignment to homicide. Flann McIllroy is the well-known homicide detective who has requested her as his partner on a single case. Once partnered with McIllroy she is introduced to the case he’s working on, connecting the violent deaths of two attractive young women to an Internet introduction service. As much as I enjoyed Burke’s previous work -- and I really, really did -- Dead Connection leaves it all in the dust. Smart, sophisticated and with a plot so twisty, no one will beat the protagonist to the conclusion, Burke has delivered her best book thus far. -- Linda L. Richards

Dead Madonna by Victoria Houston (Bleak House Books) 300 pages
Dead Madonna is the eighth entry in Victoria Houston’s “Loon Lake Mystery” series, named for the village in rural Wisconsin where the stories take place. Loon Lake is a weekend retreat for the wealthy folk who come over from Chicago and a year-round home for the rest, who cater to the tourist trade. And like most small towns full of weekend and “summer people,” Loon Lake is a village long on demands and short on resources. So, when Loon Lake is suddenly faced with two homicides discovered on the same day, it’s crisis time. Nora Loomis, a local senior citizen, is found dead in her cottage sunroom, her head caved in by a sharp blow from an antique porcelain lamp. On the other side of the village, the body of DeeDee Kurlander, Loon Lake’s answer to Paris Hilton, is found submerged under the pontoon boat of Bert Moriarty, a Chicagoan with more money than tact. The notion that these are two random victims, with nothing in common and with no apparent connections, is shattered when Chief of Police Lew Ferris is told by a pair of local bank presidents that they’ve noticed a disturbing series of transactions at their institutions involving phony deposits and mysterious but all too real withdrawals of large sums of money -- transactions that appear to be part of a money-laundering scheme. And the two dead women? They were holders of accounts that had seen these transactions processed. Author Houston populates her tale with all the anchors of the traditional whodunit. In fact, if Agatha Christie were alive in the modern-day Midwest, she might well have concocted a detective like Ferris. Dead Madonna progresses at a leisurely pace, yet the writing is interesting and keeps the narrative moving nicely. Like Loon Lake, the stillness might strike some as a hint of a shallow yarn. I can assure you, though, that this is not a lazy entertainment. -- Stephen Miller

Death Comes for the Fat Man by Reginald Hill (HarperCollins) 416 pages
Death Comes for the Fat Man marks a dramatic turning point in Reginald Hill’s renowned series about British police detectives Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe. It’s not giving anything away to say that the “fat man” of the title is Dalziel. Once again, the crude, flamboyant, larger-than-life Detective Superintendent dominates the story. But this time, it’s in absentia. This book opens with a dimwitted constable calling in a possible firearms violation at a shabby video store. Because the store is owned by a Muslim, the situation has to be dealt with as a potential terrorist threat. The Yorkshire police department’s SWAT-style response seems ludicrously overblown to Pascoe and Dalziel -- until the street they’re staking out explodes, leaving Dalziel critically injured and expected to die. Pascoe throws himself into the ensuing investigation, unearthing a homegrown counter-terrorist group and finding himself thwarted at every turn by shadowy officials from the national security agency. Meanwhile, Death is having nearly as difficult a time tightening his grip on Dalziel. Hill is the grandmaster of a peculiarly British mystery subgenre -- books that are too realistic and brutal to be cozies, but at the same time too ironic and playful to be hard-boiled. (There’s some resemblance to Colin Watson’s Flaxborough chronicles and Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse series, but Hill writes on a far grander and more complex scale.) Some of the most recent books in the Dalziel-Pascoe series have verged on the esoteric, but that’s sure not the case here: Hill’s given Death Comes for the Fat Man a riveting plot and he keeps the political theme (the conflict between investigating a terrorist crime and respecting the rights of individuals) firmly in check. The sinewy Death Comes for the Fat Man will bring a chill to any reader, and it has particular poignancy for those of us forced to realize, along with Pascoe, how very much we’ve cared about Andy Dalziel. -- Karen G. Anderson

The Death List by Paul Johnston (MIRA Books) 432 pages
I hadn’t read anything from Paul Johnston for a while, but then from out of nowhere and bursting out with an angry and dynamic energy came this opus set in modern-day London. The plot builds around Matt Wells, a struggling crime writer, struggling father and generally struggling man in a world that seems to have conspired against him. Add to that base an obsessive and deranged fan who’s stalking Wells, and you have all of the ingredients for a tense thriller. Evidently, this unhinged fan is a budding serial murderer who calls himself the White Devil, and who ensnares the hapless Wells in a deadly cat-and-mouse game that leaves a trail of torture and murder all over the historic British capital -- many of the crimes based on scenes in Wells’ fiction. At first, the White Devil punishes people who did him harm during his traumatic childhood: his priest, a teacher and a school bully. But when the killer begins targeting people from Wells’ world, the police begin to take greater notice. It’s clear that Wells is being set up, given the appearance of being a murderer himself. Also apparent is that the White Devil knows in advance every move Wells makes, adding to the latter’s frustration. Johnston’s protagonist sends many of his loved ones -- his daughter, his ex-wife, his mother and his lover -- into hiding, and simultaneously calls forth some of his old rugby friends to help him fight back against the White Devil. Using high-tech methods as well as brute force, Wells & Company go hunting for the hunter. Meanwhile, in the background, a contingent of Special Air Service (SAS) troopers roam London’s back alleys, searching for answers from people familiar with the White Devil. And as both the good guys and the baddies are dispatched with a dash of the Grand Guignol, the stakes in this chase are dramatically heightened. The Death List is a very fast read, sure to spark a series, as Wells is an interesting character who remains angry even at the end, as there is one very disturbing plot strand left unresolved. -- Ali Karim

Donkey Punch by Ray Banks (Polygon UK) 224 pages
Ray Banks’ previous Cal Innes novel, Saturday’s Child (2006), started with an assault by toilet and just got better. But nothing prepared me for Donkey Punch, as hard and fine a crime novel as I’ve read in a long, long time. With prison and parole behind him, former private eye Innes is back on the harsh, unrelenting streets of Manchester, England, trying to carve out some sort of halfway decent life for himself, while remaining clean and sober (codeine doesn’t really count, does it?). He’s managed to find work as a sort of combination caretaker and minder for his old pal, big soft-hearted Paulo, a retired fighter who runs the Lads’ Club, a boxing club for young offenders. Now all Cal really wants to do is keep out of trouble. But of course, trouble promptly rears its ugly head. What separates Banks’ writing from that of so many other “new wave of noir” writers is that he actually seems to understand noir and what lies right at its deep, dark heart. He doesn’t have to rely on juvenile, self-conscious shock tactics (crucifixion was very popular this year) to tell his story. Instead, he does it the old-fashioned way -- by creating credible, memorable characters and telling an actual story. Don’t get me wrong: nasty things do happen in this book, but it’s the characters that really matter. And what characters they are. Paulo’s latest prodigy is Liam, a big lout with a killer punch and more issues than a magazine stand. But Paulo thinks Liam has potential and lands him a spot on the card at a major tournament in Los Angeles. Paulo then dispatches a reluctant Cal to babysit the young fighter, and that’s when the trouble starts. The two don’t hit it off (to put it mildly), the tournament might be fixed, and Cal’s chronic back pain and his codeine habit are getting worse, along with Liam’s temper. And the two men are far, far from home. Toss in a possible nut-job with a thing for fighters, the disappearance of Liam right before the big match, and a running commentary on the state of the U.S. of A. from a frustrated and increasingly bewildered Cal who just wants to find a place where he can have a smoke, and you’ve got one of the best fish-out-of-water travelogues I’ve read in a while. The action is fierce, the worldview is bleak, the barbs are pointed, the points are sharp and Banks uses them with dexterity and skill. And the scenes between the increasingly frantic Cal and Paulo, mostly by long distance, are -- so help me-- touching. Their fumbling friendship and awkward but genuine concern for each other ring true in a way rarely seen in crime fiction. Which, ultimately, is what raises this book so high above much of what passes for noir these days. Lots of neo-noir’s young tyros can punch -- and Banks can punch as hard as the best of them -- but he also has the heart and soul to back it up. I tell ya, he could be a contender. -- Kevin Burton Smith

Down River by John Hart (St. Martin’s Minotaur) 336 pages
I missed John Hart’s first novel for St. Martin’s, The King of Lies (2006), and felt sorry to have done so. I was lucky to catch up with him for Down River, an ambitious crime novel that sets its sights on the weight of family obligations, small-town memories, violence and love. This is a novel of the American South, for the action takes place in North Carolina and the main character, Adam Chase, is a Southern man. We all know the old Thomas Wolfe warning about how you can’t home again, but novelists keep trying, and Hart succeeds here in surpassing the strictures of crime drama, evoking the theme of a fallen hero exiled from home without breaking stride. In these pages, Chase returns to Salisbury, North Carolina, after five years in New York. He’d previously beaten a murder charge and taken off for the cold city, leaving behind his father, his girl and everyone else he loved. The local sheriff does not appreciate his return, nor does the childhood friend who seems entangled in the drug trade. Although the elements of this story may sound over-the-top, Down River is more than salvaged by the author’s skillful prose and compelling story line. Hart keeps his plot moving by digging deep into the local brambles of money, tradition and well-kept secrets. In lesser hands this material might have degenerated into a vapid potboiler, but the opposite happens here; Hart sustains an aura of plausibility while creating a portrait of a town on the cusp of significant change, a place soon to be unrecognizable. Adam Chase goes home again, but John Hart avoids cheap theatrics and makes Adam’s journey well worth taking. -- David Thayer

Duck Duck Wally by Gabe Rotter (Simon & Schuster) 320 pages
This debut novel starts off slow and sort of L.A. hipster-ish, so I was prepared to hate it, to put it back on my shelf and forget it was there; but instinct forced me onward, convincing me that something was worthwhile about Duck Duck Wally. And I’m glad I persisted, because soon enough I was laughing hard and on a regular basis, starting when our protagonist, the chubby and schlubbish Wally Moscowitz, is in a bathroom and bumps into a rapper who works at the same music company he does ... and then accidentally urinates on the man. Normally, toilet humor doesn’t connect with me, but by the time we reach this scene, author Rotter has established complete control over the book, his world and his characters. Chief among those players is the aforementioned Wally, who lives in a shabby apartment, has a girlfriend who hates him, the worst agent in L.A. and a really big secret. It seems he’s the real writer of the lyrics for the biggest-name rapper in the world. And somebody knows it. He discovers this when he gets home one night and his dog, his only friend in the world, is missing. It’s not long before he receives a ransom note demanding money, or he’ll never see his dog again -- and the kidnapper will tell the world about Wally’s job with the music industry. Duck Duck Wally is one of those novels in which, if something bad can happen, it will. And Rotter rarely gives his man a break. Amid the chaos, though, this book offers some humanity. We can all relate to having a close connection to a pet, or being trapped in a relationship that just doesn’t work. Duck Duck Wally is a novel that will keep you laughing, but will also leave you liking the hapless Wally Moscowitz and wanting him to succeed. No matter how skeptical you were going into this story. -- Cameron Hughes

End Games by Michael Dibdin (Pantheon) 335 pages
End Games is the 11th and, by default, the final novel involving Italian police-detective Aurelio Zen; his creator, English-born Michael Dibdin, died in 2007. The book is “typical” Dibdin: unique, imaginative, intricate, amusing, shocking and written in a brilliant and detailed prose almost hallucinatory in its effect. This ultimate book finds Zen posted to Calabria, a remote and ambiguous part of Italy where, as one resident explains, “life itself is subjunctive. Reality here has always been so harsh that we have by necessity learnt to content ourselves with the possible, the desirable and the purely imaginary.” In this speculative region, Zen investigates the death of an American (or was he Calabrian?) apparently acting as advance-man for a supposed film company allegedly making a movie based on the revelations of St. John the Divine. Financing comes from a Northern California dot-com entrepreneur, served by a Vietnamese lieutenant, who gives orders to a headstrong Italian director. Such an international cast allows for all sorts of amusing linguistic display, in a novel whose author often seems intoxicated with words. Author Michael Dibdin was as dazzling a stylist as mystery fiction has had in decades. In the words of an American rhythm-and-blues folk-song (or was it a Calabrian proverb?): “You don’t miss your water ’till the well runs dry.” -- Tom Nolan

The Gentle Axe by R.N. Morris (Penguin Press) 305 pages
It’s no secret that Porfiry Petrovich, the investigating magistrate created by Fyodor Dostoevsky in his 1866 novel Crime and Punishment, served as a model to Richard Levinson and William Link for the making of their 1970s TV-detective Lieutenant Columbo (“Oh -- just one more question ...”). Now the investigator has been revived in his own right by English author R.N. “Roger” Morris in this superior historical mystery novel which takes place a year and a half after the events of Dostoevsky’s classic work. In Morris’ hands, the inspector is an intriguing figure: perceptive, devoted and as kind as his occupation allows. And his St. Petersburg is as complex as Dostoevsky’s: full of moral, political and physical danger. The Gentle Axe begins with the discovery of a pair of corpses in a park: a dwarf crammed into a suitcase, and a husky man dangling from a tree limb. During his investigation, the inspector encounters citizens of all strata -- from aristocrats to prostitutes, from aesthetes and intellectuals to gamblers and knaves. Most interesting of all, perhaps, is Porfiry Petrovich himself, whose boss tells him: “All [your rival colleague] has is his ambition, and his power. You have more. You have cleverness and compassion.” -- Tom Nolan

Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino, translated by Rebecca Copeland (Alfred A. Knopf) 480 pages
Physiognomy is an obsession in Natsuo Kirino’s second novel (after 2003’s Out) to be translated into English. The planes and shadows of the human face become maps of a future foretold. Add a strong dose of fatalism to the mix, and theis story of how two young women from a prestigious school become victims of murder takes the reader through the history of a family doomed by a toxic mix of beauty and resentment. The unnamed heroine of Grotesque is the elder of two children born to a Swiss father and a Japanese mother. Burdened by the beauty of her sister, Yuriko Hirata, and her utter disgust for her parents, she is convinced that beauty is a monster devouring the lives of everyone around her. One Christmas holiday at a Japanese mountain cabin provides the spark for the dramatic break between the narrator and Yuriko; a dirty trick played on the younger girl results in Yuriko being sent off to live with another family, the Johnsons -- a family demonstrably more glamorous than her own. The murder of two Tokyo prostitutes occurs in the narrator’s adult perspective, bringing the story briefly into a present as precarious as the journal-style flashbacks that dominate Grotesque’s opening chapters. As it turns out, one of the dead women is Yuriko, the sister lost so many years earlier, doomed by her flawless skin, radiant hair and perfect form. Yuriko’s death triggers remembrance, not grief, and the novel shifts back to the sisters’ school years, during which their lives overlap again. Yuriko returns to Japan after her mother’s suicide in Switzerland. She is accepted into the Q system, a school for elite students. Her only qualification is her looks, which is fine with Yuriko. She’s had an affair with her Swiss uncle and begins sleeping with her benefactor in exile, Johnson. Yuriko is recruited for the Cheerleaders Club, the Q system’s highest honor. Her biology professor is compromised by his role in admitting Yuriko, while his son takes on the job of acting as her pimp. These outrages are duly noted as evidence of the corruption Yuriko’s beauty spawns. Other students are drawn into the web, one of them being a girl named Kazue Sato, a weak-willed fellow traveler destined to be at the center of the Office Lady Murder -- like Yuriko, a prostitute killed in close proximity to her idol. In the present, a Chinese immigrant and lost soul, Zhang Zhe-zhong, is arrested for the crimes, but he admits only to having done in Yuriko, not Kazue 10 months later. Ultimately every character in this novel confesses his or her crimes to the narrator, described derisively as Yuriko’s older sister, unworthy of her own name. Grotesque is a layered exploration of the human psyche, of the conflict inherent in need and desire, shame and humiliation. Character after character dissolves under the author’s scrutiny, until finally the haughty narrator becomes the very thing she hates, a desperate woman seeking love. Grostesque is a powerful study of people humbled at the altar of superficial values. -- David Thayer

Hammett’s Moral Vision by George J. “Rhino” Thompson (Vince Emery Productions) 246 pages
Reading Dashiell Hammett can change your life. It certainly changed George Thompson’s. He went from being a bright young academic to a man with an interesting career in law enforcement. In the meantime, he wrote a doctoral dissertation which became (in this expanded, updated form) Hammett’s Moral Vision -- a work which itself helped shape the intellectual lives of those who read it in serialized form in The Armchair Detective magazine in the early 1970s. Thompson’s work was the first serious, comprehensive critical examination of Hammett’s five novels, and it remains perhaps the best -- still stimulating and insightful after all these years. The author sees Hammett’s body of work as displaying a darkening social and moral vision, which ends in the chilly alienation of his final book. “To see the novels as I have argued,” he writes, “points, I think, to at least one reason Hammett never again wrote a major novel after The Thin Man; he had no more to say. He had worked out as far as he could the possibilities of the questions he had raised concerning individual man and society.” -- Tom Nolan

The Intruders by Michael Marshall (HarperCollins UK) 416 pages
From the creator of the Straw Men trilogy comes this remarkable thriller that mixes crime fiction with a dose of horror and conspiracy theories, all resulting in a sense of dread that reaches a crescendo with a very perplexing and terrifying climax. What I love about Marshall’s work is his “off-kilter” view of life and death, which in The Intruders is at its most menacing. This novel starts out with the apparently motiveless murder of a mother and her teenage son, the killer being a man who shows no emotion or humanity. This man, we learn, is called Shepard and he seems controlled by others -- not unlike the killers who populated The Straw Men, but with some major differences, which are only revealed at the stunning climax. Enter Jack Whalen, an ex-LAPD cop turned writer who escaped the madness of Los Angeles for a small town called Birch Crossing on the northern Pacific Rim. His life with wife Amy, a high-flying corporate executive, could not be better, until one day when an old high-school friend, Gary Fisher, calls him up and wants to share a secret. Then things start to get really surreal. Amy goes missing in Seattle, leaving Whalen to suspect she’s having an affair; but when she returns, things have changed and so has Amy. Whalen’s world starts to crumble. Add to the tale’s complications a missing child called Madison (who exhibits psychopathic tendencies and is drawn to the murderous Shepard), more deaths and a sinister legal firm that serves multi-million-dollar corporate clients out of -- get this -- a rotting tenement building in the slum district of Seattle, and you have a tale from which dread just seeps off the page and onto your fingers as you flip through the book. Whalen turns to Fisher to help unravel himself from the nightmare coalescing around him. At its dark heart, The Intruders is a horrific conspiracy thriller. It blends Michael Marshall’s parallax-ed view of life with a sense of menace that reaches out and grabs you, filling your mind with sheer dread. I really cannot say any more, lest I spoil the big surprise that sits like a well-armed demon at the end of this novel. -- Ali Karim

(Part II can be found here.)

Best Books of 2007: Fiction

A Miracle of Catfish by Larry Brown (Algonquin Books) 335 pages
For me, there was no doubt that Larry Brown’s final, unfinished novel is the one that still burns bright. Brown died of a heart attack the day before Thanksgiving in 2004 and this year his long-time publisher delivered the author’s Southern-fried magnum opus. Set in rural Mississippi, A Miracle of Catfish sprawls across a year in the life of about a dozen characters, including 72-year-old Cortez Sharp who digs a pond and fills it with catfish, a down-on-his-luck fellow named Tommy who runs a fish-stocking business and who secretly slips a giant catfish into Cortez’s pond, eight-year-old Jimmy who lives down the road from Cortez and whose sole happiness in life is riding his new go-kart, and Jimmy’s daddy who knows he’s “nothing but a fuckup, would never be anything but a fuckup, and never had been anything but that.” Eventually, these lives -- including Ursula, the Moby Dick of catfish -- intersect in ways great and small. Brown expertly chronicles blue collar life and makes us feel the rural depression, both economic and mental. No matter what color our own collars, we can relate to characters like Jimmy’s Daddy who laments, “He’s going to have to fix his life somehow because it’s not working the way it is. But what’s he going to do? What’s the first move he’s going to make? What's he going to do today that’s going to be different from yesterday?” Brown’s world is one where you can pull up to a convenience store and find “a toddler standing in dirty underpants on the gravel out by the gas pumps eating cigarette butts.” It’s a place where a washed-up, burnt-out man lives in a “grassless mobile home that was no longer mobile, merely home” and eats “lighter-fluid-flavored hamburgers” washed down with a six-pack. It’s been nearly nine months since I read A Miracle of Catfish, but I can still remember dozens of scenes like they were part of a vivid movie I watched last night. Larry Brown may be gone, but he will never be forgotten. -- David Abrams

The Best American Comics 2007 edited by Chris Ware and Anne Elizabeth Moore (Houghton Mifflin) 368 pages
There are times when I get jaded. Times when I think so much that’s great has been done and even celebrated, how can it ever be competed with? Topped? I guess that’s what annual anthologies are about. Reminding us that there’s new and exciting stuff coming up from sources we hadn’t anticipated, and collecting it between two covers so we can take it out and enjoy it and share whenever the mood strikes. The Best American Comics 2007 is a classic example of that. If you have any affection at all for this artform, this anthology can not help but excite you. Edited by the great white hope of comics, Chris Ware, who does a credible job of setting a mandate for the book: “Any good annual anthology should have a sort of desert island condensation to it; even if every single comic produced between August 2005 and August 2006 suddenly and mysteriously vaporized, this book should still at least hint at what was happening during those months.” I don’t have the space to run down the contents of the book, but let it be said it meets Ware’s goal admirably. There’s enough of a selection here -- broad and deep -- to make both comic and graphic novel lovers’ heads swim. One can only conclude that, for comics, the year documented was a very good one, indeed. -- Lincoln Cho

Beyond the Blue by Andrea MacPherson (Random House Canada) 346 pages
It is Dundee, Scotland in 1918 and the War and the industrial revolution have taken an awful toll. Dundee has become a society of mostly women: making their way alone in a world that is ugly and difficult, where the best a woman can hope is that her daughter might not follow her into the factories; that she might dream of a better life. For most it is a hope that will fail. In Beyond the Blue, her fourth book and her second novel, Andrea MacPherson captures the time and place beautifully. MacPherson shepherds her careful creations through the eventful times in which they live. All the while, she pushes them through the hopelessness and, in a way -- and in each character’s own way -- finally past it. At the end of Beyond the Blue and upon reflection, one discovers that MacPherson’s lyrical metaphors have followed us home. Though we thought all along that the journey she was guiding us on was a historical one, after a while one sees that aspects of this journey aren’t so very different from our own. -- Linda L. Richards

Blaze by Richard Bachman, introduction by Stephen King (Scribner) 304 pages
Finally, in 2007 we got to read Stephen King’s 1973 novel, Blaze, which he released under his pen-name “Richard Bachman.” Blaze is really a novella written in the same haunting style as the work from King’s 1982 collection, Different Seasons, which featured “The Breathing Method,” “Apt Pupil,” “The Body” and “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.” In fact, Shawshank Penitentiary wins a few mentions in this very moving and engaging story. I consider the four stories in Different Seasons to be among this author’s best, and Blaze easily matches the quality of those works. King’s introduction to this book is very interesting, since he talks about it in the context of his entire oeuvre. He explains how much he enjoyed penning The Colorado Kid (2005) for Hard Case Crime, but thought that Blaze was more of a melodrama and therefore not suited to that publishing house, so he decided to release it as a Bachman book, after updating it. The story is a heart-wrenching melodrama about the misadventures of Claiborne Blaisdell Jr., aka “Blaze,” a youngster brought up by an alcoholic and abusive father. As a boy, Blaze is harmed in a dreadful incident that causes brain damage and leaves him slow-witted. Blaze, however, is a big lad -- a giant if you will, but a gentle giant perplexed by the terrible things that haunt our world and are cruelly inflicted upon him. We see Blaze sent to an orphanage, where he is mistreated but survives by his good nature, and how he befriends a more intelligent but weaker boy, John Cheltzman. Together they survive the rigors of the orphanage by helping each other out. In terms of structure and theme, Blaze shares a chord or two with “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” including how friendship and hope can carry you through the cruelty that life throws up. However, you can see that this new tale will end in tragedy, after the naïve Blaze befriends a criminal, who works out the perfect scam: the kidnapping of a baby from a wealthy Maine family. The gentle giant Blaze hasn’t the intelligence to pull off this scam, and his love for the child will be his undoing. For me, this story is a gem and I am so glad that King found it and issued it at last, because for the few hours it took to unravel, I sat mesmerized. -- Ali Karim

Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo (Knopf) 544 pages
The author of Mohawk and the Pulitzer-winning Empire Falls, Russo is a master of the small-town novel, a sympathetic observer of the limited vision but big hearts that so often predominate in such environments. Here he gives us the Lynches, a family marked by their contrasts and enriched by the people they come to love and lose over the period of two generations. Russo’s tale unfolds mostly around Louis C. -- or “Lucy” -- Lynch, the 60-year-old heir to a convenience-store empire who, with his wife, is soon headed to Italy to visit a childhood friend, and reliving in the course of it all the traumas that shaped him as much as they did the upstate New York town beyond which he’s never grown. Russo finds humor and humanity in places that other writers wouldn’t even bother to look. He’s an extraordinary talent, even though he favors using certain recognizable sorts of characters in every book. Bridge of Sighs is for readers willing to abandon themselves to expert storytelling, driven equally by character and plot and meandering somewhat in the way of a country creek. As ever, Russo is a writer who makes other writers jealous. -- J. Kingston Pierce

The Dark River by John Twelve Hawks (Doubleday) 384 pages
Speculation over the identity of John Twelve Hawks, shadowy author of the projected Fourth Realm Trilogy, dominated the reception of the first book in this series (2005’s The Traveler) and seems to have led reviewers to cold-shoulder its sequel, The Dark River. That’s a damn shame, because these books are some of the best futurist fiction around. Anyone who follows the cyber-fiction of authors such William Gibson, Neil Stephenson and Cory Doctorow, will be intrigued by Hawks’ trilogy. It’s the story of Gabriel Corrigan, who discovers as an adult that he is descended from a race of psychically gifted humans called Travelers. In the first book of the series, Gabriel and his brother Michael are trying to avoid detection by a Big Brother-like corporation (The Brethren) that gathers data from the growing variety of technology sources used to track individuals. The group is sinisterly interested in the Corrigans’ abilities, hoping to use their talents to further contacts The Brethren have made with a civilization in another realm. Gabriel and Michael discover that a cadre of protectors called Harlequins exists to protect Travelers. At the close of the first book, Gabriel, assisted by his Harlequin guardian Maya, has connected with a Pathfinder -- a woman who can teach Gabriel how to use his psychic talents to contact beings on other worlds. Michael, always skeptical of their chances and not entirely convinced that he and Gabriel are truly in danger, is captured by The Brethren. They persuade him to take a drug they’ve developed that supposedly bypasses the need for a Pathfinder. Captured by The Brethren, then liberated by Maya, Gabriel escapes to a hideout in America's remote desert Southwest. Picking up where that first adventure left off, The Dark River follows Gabriel and Maya from the Southwest (where the commune that sheltered them has been destroyed), across the country to New York and from there to Europe. Meanwhile, brother Michael is discovering more about the talent he had once doubted, and falling further under the control of The Brethren. A rather too predictable romantic relationship evolves between Gabriel and Maya (forbidden, of course, under the laws that govern Travelers and Harlequins). The Dark River adds to the trilogy two memorable female characters. One is the formidable Harlequin Mother Blessing, who packs, along with her sword, “a laptop, bolt cutters, lock picks and a small canister of liquid nitrogen for disabling infrared motion detectors.” The other is The Brethren board member Mrs. Brewster, who blandly presides over the murder of one of her board colleagues at dinner, murmuring as he crashes onto the table, “How very sad.” While The Dark River does little more than fill in the sweeping structures set forth in the first book of this trilogy, it does so at a breathless pace and with tantalizing detail. In other words, it does its job as the second book of a trilogy by making you want to read that third and final novel as soon as possible. -- Karen G. Anderson

The End of the Alphabet by CS Richardson (Doubleday)
This little tale of a special love is one of those tearjerkers, but so well done that you'll want to lend it to all your friends and buy it for those nearest you. My little copy has been out six times, and each time has been returned definitely more tear-stained than when it left. I’ve had frantic friends trying to buy it in London, England and in Durban, South Africa. You can read it in an evening, and probably will. It gets away with murder, and I’m still not sure how the author does that. He writes simply about a clichéd situation; why is it so beautiful and moving? “...I was intrigued by other nuances,” Richardson writes on the Random House Web site, “of life, of love, and how far each would go, indeed could go, to sustain the other.” His literary exploration of this makes for an emotive yet rational, elegant yet earthy, diminutive classic, proving that the best things can indeed come in small packages. -- Cherie Thiessen

Effigy by Alissa York (Random House Canada) 448 pages
Effigy was born when author York read a newspaper article about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and one of their infamous Canadian communities in Bountiful, British Columbia. “I was shocked to read that the ‘plural wives’ of Bountiful are often little more than children when they are given in marriage,” she recently explained in an interview. There are all the right blends in this Giller-nominated historical novel. Complicated and fascinating characters who are totally credible, meticulous research and editing of details to both enlighten and to entertain the reader, a plot divided equally into riveting strands which finally get woven together into a conclusion that’s both shocking yet credible, and we have writing that is elegant and artful. Murder, slaughter, ghosts, adultery, revenge, the gold rush, a circus and lots of secrets, Effigy has ‘em. People talk about “light reads” and “escapist books” sometimes, claiming that they just don’t have the energy or attention span for “literature.” York proves that a work of art can be both. -- Cherie Thiessen

Finn: A Novel by Jon Clinch (Random House) 304 pages
Spinning off from Mark Twain’s 1884 classic, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Clinch turns his focus on Huck’s dissolute father, “Pap,” in this truly extraordinary debut novel. Bigoted, violent, cast out from society and thoroughly unapologetic for anything and everything he’s done, the often-heedless Pap must deal here with a fondness for moonshine, a purloined slave of a mistress, a condemnatory progenitor of his own, and the bloated corpse of an African-American woman, murdered and found floating down the broad Mississippi River. That unidentified body begins Finn and is the thread with which Clinch knits together his complex back story to Huckleberry Finn. Don’t be concerned that this is a rewriting of Twain’s book; in fact, it intersects that previous masterpiece at only one obvious point I recognize, and otherwise exists independently and energetically from it, drawing its strength from its author’s own fertile imagination, not merely from the curiosity readers might have about its behind-the-scenes drama. True, this dark yarn isn’t Twain, but then what else is? -- J. Kingston Pierce

Five Skies by Ron Carlson (Viking) 244 pages
Ron Carlson’s novel about three men building a motorcycle stunt ramp in Idaho is quiet -- you can practically hear the wind whistling through the pages. In that silence, you will find absolute heartbreak as the story builds to at least one scene that will knock you flat on your back. This is Carlson’s first novel in 30 years and fans of his short stories might find themselves having to adjust their patience to slow down for the pace of this book. On the surface, very little happens in these 256 pages: three men work on a summer construction project, a large wooden ramp at the lip of a canyon, built for a motorcycle stuntwoman who plans to jump the canyon, a la Evel Knievel. The men carefully clear brush from the site, dig post-holes, hammer sheets of lumber together and smooth asphalt for the runway. There are whole pages devoted to shopping for nails, bolts, and boards. Somehow, Carlson manages to turn this simple blueprint of labor into a cunningly crafted portrait of three men searching for ways to span the emotional chasms which have, in various ways, isolated them from the rest of society. They are men at work on their souls and it’s a testament to Carlson’s talent that he’s able to make this inner journey as exciting to watch as any high-octane testosterone action movie. -- David Abrams

Graphic Witness: Four Wordless Graphic Novels edited by George A. Walker (Firefly Books) 423 pages
Graphic Witness is at once seminal and historic, a graphic witness, as the title indicates, of the very roots of the graphic novel. Here we have four important stories told in woodcut and without words, collected for us by George A. Walker, himself an award-winning engraver, book designer as well as an author, teacher and illustrator. The messages of the four artists and storytellers represented here are sometimes uneasy. “Wordless novels,” writes Walker, “have often treated controversial themes and been associated with protest movements.” And, as he points out, though the challenges they address were specific to their times, the broader issues are “sadly, still relevant to our contemporary eyes.” Sadly and yet, it’s difficult to feel anything but triumph to see them collected so carefully, presented so beautifully. Where else could one see the birth of a medium in such a perfectly wordless fashion? Belgian artist Frans Masereel (1899-1972) has been considered the father of the wordless graphic novel. Here we see the first publication of his classic work The Passion of a Man, since its original publication in Munich in 1918. From American artist Lynn Ward (1905-1985) we have Wild Pilgrimage, first published in the United States in 1932. Giacomo Patri (1898-1978) was Italian-born, though he worked and lived primarily in the United States. Here we have White Collar from 1929, a work that was used as a promotional piece by the labor movement. Finally Canadian Laurence Hyde (1914-1987) in Southern Cross criticizes American bomb testing in the South Pacific. -- Lincoln Cho

The Great Man by Kate Christensen (Doubleday) 320 pages
Wow. Just: wow. I was completely captivated by this book, and its conceit is so utterly simple that all you writers out there will kick yourselves for not thinking it up first. Famous artist, now dead. Estranged wife. Long-time lover, with child. Ageing sister, also a famous artist. And a pair of biographers who think it’s high time for someone to put the late great artist’s life in some sort of order. Except (1) they don’t know about each other and (2) what they get when they talk to the women is something much more fascinating than their personal takes on the artist's life. Instead, the woman spill the details of their own lives ... or at least that’s what we learn, thanks to the marvelous Kate Christensen. The author’s prose is wonderful, but as good as it is, it’s the way she draws these women that’s so unforgettable. Thinking back, I am reminded of something the actor Richard Dreyfus once said about Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand. He said that both of them were definite, that while some actors are defined by the roles they play, these women defined the roles, making them indelible. That’s what Christensen makes of the women in this spectacular novel. In my full review a few months ago, I said I'd miss them all. I still do. --Tony Buchsbaum

The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland (Random House Canada/Bloomsbury USA) 288 pages
The opening line of The Gum Thief provides a pretty good elevator pitch for the book. “A few years ago it occurred to me that everybody past a certain age - -regardless of how they look on the outside -- pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.” This from Roger, fast on middle-age, an “aisles associate” at an office supply store. A novel doesn’t burn inside him exactly. It’s more like it slumbers in there, like a clump of undigested cheese. The other voice we hear belongs to goth girl Bethany: “I’m the dead girl whose locker you spat on somewhere between recess and lunch.” Bethany also works at Staples and the two strike up an unlikely relationship. This is a simplistic enough description of the book that it doesn’t even begin to cover it, yet how to do it justice without proper room to share the nuance, the subtleties, the strange delights of a Douglas Coupland novel? Suffice it to say that if you’ve enjoyed Coupland in the past -- Generation X, jPod, Shampoo Planet, so many others -- you will like this one, as well. If you’ve never tasted Coupland, The Gum Thief is as good a place to start any. The sharp wit, the stylish phrasing, the journey that’s as pleasurable as the destination, The Gum Thief is just as Coupland as it gets. -- Linda L. Richards

Heyday by Kurt Andersen (Random House) 640 pages
Former Spy magazine co-founder Andersen sets off for new ground -- and lots of it -- in his second novel (after Turn of the Century, 1999). From the often dangerous and dirty thoroughfares of Manhattan Island and the revolutionary corners of Paris, he follows a quartet of unlikely young pathfinders west across the United States to California’s gold rush country in the late 1840s. The author further complicates things by having these four -- an erudite journalist, a British expatriate, a prostitute turned actress, and a soldier-cum-arsonist -- pursued by a crazed French army sergeant who is convinced he’s hot on the trail of his brother’s killer. Andersen goes a bit heavy on travelogue and historical detail in spots; you can see that he didn’t want to waste much if any of the fascinating research he did for this novel. Nonetheless, Heyday boasts the infectious excitement of a nation bursting at the seams, unfettered by self-doubt. -- J. Kingston Pierce

The Last Novel by David Markson (Shoemaker & Hoard) 220 pages
A new literary genre is slowly unfolding. Not since French filmmaker/writer Alain Robbe-Grillet penned his “new novel” back in the 1950s has there been an anti-novel movement like this. Markson started writing his unusual books in 1996, this being the fourth of what could be called a sort of series. In this work, an elderly author is dying. Lonely, broke, and depressed, he has seen his friends die, his books fall from favour with the critics, and his health deteriorate. The Last Novel is made up of a series of short paragraphs, often just a sentence, as the Novelist, who is never named, ruminates on other writers, scientists, composers, artists and personages: their genius, their harsh treatment by critics, and even occasionally their scandalous behaviour. (You’ll never feel the same way about Mozart again.) It takes a while to fall into the rhythm of this book, but when you do you’ll be entranced. Making the assumption that everything Novelist writes about is true (and I may be wrong) it’s downright amazing that Markham could have all this information in his head. Where could he research all this? Interspersed with comments about people, famous and not, are occasional sentences giving information about the Novelist himself, but you have to look for them. It’s a literary treasure hunt that I found fascinating because, along the way you uncover all kinds of smaller treasures as you hunt for clues. Fortunately it’s a fairly thin book, because one reading is never going to be enough. Like Rap was to music, Markson’s novel could well be to literature. -- Cherie Thiessen

Overclocked by Cory Doctorow (Thunder’s Mouth Press) 285 pages
There’s a reason that Cory Doctorow has gotten to be one of the strongest voices in his field in such a relatively short period: he’s wonderful. He builds worlds so completely, it’s hard sometimes to see where his creation ends and your world begins. Hardcore fans of this writer will probably have seen the six stories collected in Overclocked before. “Anda’s Game,” in which a beleaguered earthbound girl finds success and popularity in the gaming world, was chosen by Michael Chabon for Best American Short Stories 2005. “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth” was written live and broadcast to Doctorow’s fans via podcast. The affectionately named and genuinely inspired “I, Robot” won the 2005 Locus Award, and was a finalist for both the Hugo and the British Science Fiction Award. However, even fans who have encountered a story before will enjoy the author’s preface to each piece in the collection. A little monologue from Doctorow to get us on our way: this is a super touch, a bit of personal background to ground us before take off. It’s a great collection and just about impossible for me to pick favorites. This is the writer that, just this year, was named one of 250 Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum. When you read his fiction, this too makes sense. Doctorow is noted for his deep passion about the Internet as tool for democracy. He cares about people. And he also cares about big, new ideas. Add his very real talent into the mix and you have a writer worth watching. And we are. -- Linda L. Richards

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver (HarperCollins) 528 pages
A twist on the road not taken: what if, instead, one has the chance to take both? Irina McGovern is a frugal, hard-working children’s book illustrator. Her long term relationship with think-tank consultant Lawrence Trainer is as solid as it is pleasantly dull. Enter Ramsay Acton, famous snooker player, whose wife, Jude, works with Irina. Jude deserts first Irina, then Ramsay. Lawrence, taking pity on Ramsay, invites him to dinner. The attraction between Irina and Ramsay is undeniable, leaving Irina to decide the which of two good men is the better. Here the narrative forks, alternating chapters: life with Lawrence, life with Ramsay. The first is sexually fizzled but settled, a life of healthy meals and successful work. Life with Ramsay is tumultuous, a rampant sexual romp set in the endless hotels snookers players inhabit while touring. Shriver slides in a great deal about expatriate life -- Irina and Lawrence are Americans living in London -- world politics, and the ways popcorn and chilies, frugality and frivolity, the competing demands of intellect and body -- can collide with bittersweet, unexpected results. -- Diane Leach

The Terror by Dan Simmons (Little, Brown and Company) 784 pages
Two of my favorite films are The Thing from Another World (1951) and its remake/reworking, John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), which were based on a science-fiction story, “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell. All are set within the Arctic Circle. So I was amused to read that Simmons dedicated his latest book to the cast, writers and directors of the 1951 movie version. The reason is that The Terror shares its theme, location and atmosphere with that frigidly terrifying big-screen production. Simmons is a writer who I have followed for many years, as he’s penned award-winning horror fiction, science fiction and crime thrillers. The Terror seems to be a culmination of his work, and probably his most ambitious book, because it is studiously researched, written in period flavor and rich beyond belief in terms of its historical backdrop. The plot fictionalizes the account of a real British expedition in the 1840s to find the fabled “Northwest Passage” through to the Arctic. Two ships set off -- the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror. The bone-gripping cold and ice are only two of the frights that the mariners face, for rotting food, disease, threat of mutiny and a creature trapped on the frozen ice start to pare down the ranks of participants in this unholy mission. The expedition is led by Captains John Franklin (on the Erebus) and Francis Crozier (commanding the Terror), and interestingly the book makes much of the class distinctions that were commonplace in those times. The most remarkable aspects of this novel, though, are its writing style and its atmospherics. I had to turn the heating up when I sat down with Simmons’ story, because reading about the cold weather that locked the two tall-masted ships in the polar ice actually gave me goosebumpy chills. On top of those were added metaphysical chills. After Simmons’ mariners leave their ships, they encounter an Eskimo man and woman, the latter of whom is mute, her tongue appearing to have been sliced out. Then comes the sound of a monster from somewhere out on the limitless, featureless ice, howling in concert with the wind. The superstitious mariners come to believe that this Eskimo woman is some kind of witch, drawing the monster toward them. Despite its doorstopper size, and heavy use of description, The Terror moves at a fair pace. I’d surmise that this novel was a labor of love for Simmons, who got the chance to invent his own circumstances around the fate of Franklin and his crew, who were last seen by other Europeans in July 1845. If you want a book to trap you for more than a few hours, with a most unconventional plot, The Terror is it. Just know that your heating bill will increase when you crack the spine of this hefty tome, because the chills inside are real. -- Ali Karim

Wife in the Fast Lane by Karen Quinn (Simon & Schuster) 448 pages
In Wife in the Fast Lane, former Olympic champion Christy Hayes, now the successful founder/CEO of Baby G, an athletic shoe company, has finally met and married the love of her life, sexy media mogul Michael Drummond. Childless by choice, due to Michael’s angst at his failed first marriage and resulting non-relationship with his daughter, they’ve settled into the fast-paced lifestyle of the rich and famous, and perpetual wedded bliss.
That all comes crashing down a few months later when Maria, Christy’s housekeeper and confidant, dies suddenly, leaving Christy to raise her 11-year-old granddaughter. Michael refuses to get involved in young Renata Ruiz’ life, reminding Christy of their agreement. As if that weren’t enough to send Christy into a funk, her business partner and best friend, Kathleen, stabs her in the back, ousting her from Baby G, a female newspaper reporter is set on breaking up her marriage, and the PTA at the private school she chooses for Renata is headed by the Stepford mother-from-hell. Wife in the Fast Lane is an example of chick lit at its best. Christy’s attempts to become the perfect wife and mother using the same leadership skills that failed her at her first career are misguided and hilarious, and the completely contrived happy ending will satisfy this genre’s fans everywhere. -- Mary Ward Menke

Best Books of 2007: Non-Fiction

America, 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T and the Making of a Modern Nation by Jim Rasenberger (Scribner) 320 pages
We think of our own times as being the fastest-paced, most astonishing in American history. But people living in 1908, the subject of ex-Vanity Fair editor Rasenberger’s delightful new book, must have felt the same. Packed into that single 12-month period were Henry Ford’s introduction of the Model T; a thrilling 20,000-mile car race from New York to Paris; the supposed deaths of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in Bolivia; President Theodore Roosevelt’s dispatching of the Great White Fleet on a round-the-world display of U.S. military potency; the second insanity trial of wealthy Pittsburgh scion Harry K. Thaw for the slaying of renowned architect Stanford White; explorer Robert Peary’s final assault on the North Pole; the “Tunguska event,” a massive explosion -- likely caused by a descending comet -- that felled some 80 million trees; and the very first passenger death in an airplane, flown by Orville Wright. By comparison, today’s redundant White House scandals, continuing disaster in Iraq, and tawdry doings among the rich young starlet set hardly seem to measure up. Rasenberger’s many-layered narrative balances out the optimism of 1908 and the sense of a country taking center stage, against the adversities -- lynchings in the South, terrorist explosions in Manhattan -- that lurked just beneath America’s idealized vision of itself. -- J. Kingston Pierce

A Memoir of Friendship, The Letters between Carol Shields and Blanche Howard by Blanche & Allison Howard (Viking Canada)
This mother and daughter team have edited a mountain of correspondence between two literary women who became fast friends. Beginning in 1971, and ending with Shields’ death in 2003, the correspondence begins tentatively and superficially but soon becomes more intimate and heartfelt as the women get to know one another better. Evolving from hand-written letters sent by snail mail to word processing and on to e-mail, the writing chronicles far more than just the relationship between two writers. Because of the nature of the women, their communication is full of juicy details about publishing, professional associations, critics, writers, the latest hot books and authors, travel and even politics. Even readers who know nothing about the Canadian literary scene will enjoy the chronicling of a friendship, and the thoughts and concerns of brilliant and creative woman as they discuss family, children, mutual friends, grandchildren, husband, work, travel and the challenge of balancing them all. Looming over it all, of course, is the presence of Carol Shields herself. A great literary treasure, she died all too soon. -- Cherie Thiessen

… and His Lovely Wife by Connie Schultz (Random House) 304 pages
Connie Schultz and Sherrod Brown, middle-aged and divorced with two children each, married in 2004. A year later, Brown, the Democratic Congressman from Ohio, decided to give up his Congressional seat to run against Mike DeWine, a two-term Republican Senator, in a state where no Democrat had won office for 12 years. In … and his Lovely Wife, Schultz, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer/Creators Syndicate and winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, writes candidly about the challenges facing her as an outspoken journalist, feminist and the wife of a political candidate: her newspaper’s decision not to endorse Brown; friendly co-workers who suddenly became adversaries and the growing consensus that a leave-of-absence from her job was in order; politicians’ wives who “saw themselves … through the lens of their husbands’ lives” instead of as the talented individuals she knew them to be (“Honey, my husband is my career,” a senator’s wife told her); and the unexpected death of her adored father who had become an important part of the campaign. -- Mary Ward Menke

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver (HarperCollins) 370 pages
Kingsolver’s chronicle of her family’s year spent off the petroleum grid come to us in a year of too many food books, books that were often trite, silly, or hopelessly alarmist. Kingsolver’s is none of these, managing instead to be informative, engaging and often highly amusing. Life on the Kingsolver-Hopp Appalachia farm -- youngest daughter Lily’s chickens, the complexities of raising turkeys who mate naturally, how to eat locally during the freezing months, the wondrous mushroom patch -- is never dull. Steven Hopp’s informative sidebars will frighten and anger you, as will descriptions of the appalling living conditions battery chickens and agribusiness cattle endure. But Camille’s family anecdotes and recipes soften the bad news while offering simple solutions. You gotta love a girl who, in an effort to eradicate the zucchini glut, sneaks the veggie into her little sister’s chocolate chip cookies. (All without being married to a famous comedian ... ahem.) As for Lily, who was too young to sign the book contract, well, look out. This enterprising young lady, after calling “Oh, look, Mama! The tranquils are blooming!” embarks on her chicken and egg business with amazing acumen. After all, if she can earn her half (approximately $500), well, Mama will put up the rest of the money for a horse. I’m certain by now an equine has joined the Kingsolver-Hopp household. -- Diane Leach

The Archimedes Codex: How A Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity’s Greatest Scientist by Reviel Netz and William Noel (DaCapo) 313 pages
Who would pay 2.2 million dollars for a book that not only was literally falling apart at the seams and mouldy but was also nearly illegible? Well, not so much illegible as actually erased and that written over by someone else: A prayer book written over 800 years ago using recycled vellum (sheepskin) which originally contained a major work by history’s most famous mathematical genius, Archimedes of Syracuse. In ancient times as cumbersome scrolls gave way to the new technology of neatly stacking pages between hard covers -- and before it was called a book -- it was known as a codex. A book or codex which has been written over is called a palimpsest. With The Archimedes Codex not only do we get an almost Indiana Jones type story detailing the amazing adventures the book has been through, we also get to see Archimedes’ work come to life.
The Archimedes Codex is a most fascinating tale about the history of a book. Taking the reader back 1800 years to the life and work of Archimedes and through the actual destruction of his work all the way through to the work's resurrection by a team of passionate and talented individuals who never gave up the hope that the brilliant mathematician’s work would be seen by modern eyes. -- David Middleton

Classics for Pleasure by Michael Dirda (Harcourt) 352 pages
In Classics for Pleasure Pulitzer Prize-winning literary critic, Michael Dirda, gives us breezy and elegant introductions to some of the most important literature and authors from history. Publishers Weekly described the book as casually brilliant and the description fits perfectly. Classics for Pleasure is just what the title promises: pleasurable. It’s like sitting down with a good but incredibly erudite and well read friend and talking about work by Edward Gorey and Bram Stoker and Isak Dinesen and Willa Cather and Dashiell Hammett and Eudora Welty and... well, you get the idea: close to 90 of the most important and entertaining literary works of all time. “What, precisely,” Dirda asks in the introduction, “is gained by skipping right by so many of the world’s established masterpieces? A great deal, I think.” A rich and enjoyable read I’ve found myself coming back to again and again. -- Linda L. Richards

The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula by Eric Nuzum (St. Martin’s Press/Thomas Dunne Books) 242 pages
From the very first line of the first chapter of The Dead Travel Fast, pop culture commentator Eric Nuzum tells us what kind of ride this is going to be: “Watching my own blood drip down the bathroom mirror, there’s only one thought running through my head: In a lifetime of questionable decision making, this is not one of my finer moments.” This is not your usual coffeetable-style peek at something offbeat. Nuzum immerses himself in this topic, walking the walk so completely, sometimes you just want to shut your eyes. Nuzum heads out on the trail of the vampire myth and comes up with some surprises. And, of course, it wouldn’t be a vampire hunting journey if at some point he didn’t head for Transylvania. He does this with a group of 25 “vampire enthusiasts on a Dracula-themed tour.” The tour even boasts a celebrity host: Butch Patrick from The Munsters. The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula is often funny, sometimes frightening and occasionally even sweet. Nuzum has the knack for finding both humor and humanity in the most unlikely places. Nuzum could develop into the Paul Theroux or the Bill Bryson of his era. Though he is an accomplished writer and a Murrow Award-winning reporter, The Dead Travel Fast is only Eric Nuzum’s second book (after 2001’s Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America). But you get to understand very quickly that this is a writer of merit. -- Lincoln Cho

Don’t Sleep with a Bubba: Unless Your Eggs are in Wheelchairs by Susan Reinhardt (Kensington) 256 pages
Susan Reinhardt is the South’s answer to Erma Bombeck. Her first book, Not Tonight Honey: Wait Til I’m a Size Six, was a laugh-out-loud funny introduction to her off-kilter, wildly inappropriate take on life for those of us not fortunate enough to have access to her syndicated column. Don’t Sleep with a Bubba is just as funny, although Reinhardt’s experiences with alcoholism and depression are interspersed throughout, revealing vulnerabilities not uncommon among the world’s greatest humorists. -- Mary Ward Menke

The End of the World as We Know It by Robert Goolrick (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill) 224 pages
Disclosure: I once worked for Robert Goolrick. It was my first job in New York; I was an advertising copywriter, and Robbie was my creative director. As two Southern boys, we used to sit around together and tell stories. I was always amazed at the yarns he spun, and secretly wished he would sit down and put fingers to keys. Well, he finally did it and, while this book isn't quite the laugh riot I was hoping for, it’s one of the most affecting and riveting books of the year (and I’d say that even if I hadn’t worked with the author). Rather than a book of living room tales about his eccentric family, this memoir of Goolrick’s boyhood is searing in its honesty and tragic in its utter reality. A Southern childhood gone mad, written in clear, precise, just barely emotional language that allows the images Goolrick paints to pop off the page. The words perfectly depict the man’s horrifying truth. One wonders how the hell he got through it. -- Tony Buchsbaum

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens (Twelve Books) 307 pages
Even when he’s being contrarian (OK: that’s a lot of the time) this is a writer of great style and deep thought. If you disagreed with his positions, you might occasionally find him annoying. A lot of people do. Not to mention offensive. He probably even prides himself on that. But I love his style: alternately self-deprecating and arms akimbo. He shoots from the hip, but with uncanny wit and grace. In God Is Not Great, Hitchens seems intent on pissing off as many people as possible. And, despite having been shortlisted for the National Book Award, he does. Critics have alternately called the book a masterwork and absurd, not to mention a lot of stuff in between. The reason I’ve not offered up a full-length review is that I can’t decide who is right: not really. All the same, I could read God Is Not Great all day, partly because it’s delicious to see Hitch kicking up all this stink (but is it stink for stink’s sake?) and partly because -- as always with this author -- the writing is brilliant. Love it or hate it, it’s impossible not to include Hitchens’ 17th book as one of 2007’s most noteworthy works of non-fiction. -- Linda L. Richards

The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In by Hugh Kennedy (Da Capo) 421 pages
There was a time when most of us in the West didn’t care very much about Islam. Or rather, it wasn’t that we didn’t care, exactly. More like we were fine with them doing their stuff wherever, as long as they left us to likewise do ours. No longer. Now there are many reasons -- too many for me to go into here -- for Westerners to have a good, working picture of Islamic culture and an understanding of how it came to be. For this latter, there is perhaps no better -- or more lucid -- guide than Hugh Kennedy’s The Great Arab Conquests. Kennedy is that rare and special combination: an actual authority -- an expert in his field -- with the sensibilities of a storyteller. Kennedy here brings history to glowing life and, in the process, illuminates a part of our present in rich and meaningful ways. Unforgettable. -- Aaron Blanton

Holocaust by Angela Gluck Wood (DK Children) 192 pages
One could fill libraries only with books about the Holocaust, but one should have a special place. Created in the easily accessible style of so many of DK’s books, this one contains text disguised as captions, and the little bits and bites add up to an extraordinary story of racism, bigotry, murder and loss. As clear-headed and fact-filled as the words are, though, the real treasure of this book is the illustrations. There are portraits, maps, charts, archival photos, images of Nazi-era propaganda and on and on. One could almost flip through without reading a single word and glean the whole story. The book is divided up into sections on Europe’s Jews, Nazi Rule, the Ghettos, the murders, resistance, the war’s end and the aftermath. Throughout, thankfully, in high contrast to the dark tales, are survivor’s stories taken from the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, the brainchild of Steven Spielberg that was founded after he directed Schindler’s List. The Institute has recorded nearly 52,000 testimonies, and while this book can only hint at their emotional thunder, a DVD (included) provides even more insight. To say this book is unique is quite an understatement. It is a document unlike any other I have seen, both encyclopedic in scope and somehow both devastating and hopeful in its message. While DK publishes this book for children, I felt the book was more adult than that. Holocaust is actually very grown up and graphic in places. I rather think younger children would be freaked by some of it. Hence: I’ve included it in my picks for best of non-fiction. It’s a wonderful book, but really not appropriate for some children. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Jekka’s Complete Herb Book by Jekka McVicar (Raincoast Books) 304 pages
For some time, there has been a need for a lucid, intelligent, clearly illustrated book on herbs that is neither too new-age nor too high brow. An easy-to-use reference that put all the information at your fingertips, in a simple, lovely volume. And not an old time herbal, but one that incorporates the way we live and use herbs now. Jekka’s Complete Herb Book is that single, well-planned volume. A newly revised and expanded edition of her classic herbal work of the same title, each herb gets one, two or four pages, depending on importance. For instance, lavender is an important herb with many species and uses. It gets four page. Sea Fennel is not widely known or used and is given a single page. For each herb we’re given photographic examples, information on varietals, cultivation as well as details on medicinal and culinary uses of the herb under discussion. My single quibble is with the reproduction of some of the photos. Though most are good, some are badly rasterized, as though taken at low resolution by a digital camera. Fortunately, these not-so-great photos are far outnumbered by really superior ones. In all other regards Jekka’s Complete Herb Book is a stunning production. A welcome addition to the amateur herbalist’s bookshelf. -- India Wilson

The Knowledge Book (National Geographic) 512 pages
Every few years, someone publishes a compendium of the latest knowledge required to exist in our world. This year, the friendly people at National Geographic drew the short straw. And that’s lucky for us, because The Knowledge Book is one hell of a compendium. It clocks in at about a zillion pages (okay, 512 ... but still) and contains more stuff than you can count on about a million people’s hands. Honestly, every single page is a treasure trove, laid out in concise text that’s supplemented by expertly drawn charts, photos, sketches and every other manner of illustration, as well as by Key Facts boxes, Insider Knowledge boxes and hundreds of sidebars. Each and every spread contains one general theme, and scores of themes are contained in each section, which cover things like the stars and planets, life on Earth, social issues, the arts and modern life, oceans and seas, the world of plants, materials of tomorrow, automotive engineering, old and new math, the business of business, the religions of China and Japan, knowledge and faith, psychoanalysis, baroque, classical architecture, realism and naturalism, modern music, film and health. And by the way, I’ve barely scratched the surface. If last century’s encyclopedias were text-heavy affairs that left you exhausted for all the reading you had to do, this book is just the opposite, created for our visual-oriented kids (and our visual-oriented selves) and it will leave every reader invigorated and hungry for more. Thankfully, more is what this amazing book is all about. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America by Andrew Ferguson (Atlantic Monthly Press) 288 pages
Abraham Lincoln has been dead and buried for more than 140 years, but that hasn’t stopped a lot of folks from thinking about him -- a lot. That’s the central theme of Ferguson’s new book, an exploration of Lincoln’s presence in modern American culture. It’s a marvelous addition to anyone’s reading list. Ferguson, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, was awakened to the ongoing passion about Lincoln when he read in The Washington Post of an intense protest surrounding the dedication of a Lincoln statue in Richmond, Virginia, near the Tredegar Iron Works, where Confederate cannonballs were manufactured during the “war of Northern aggression.” The statue depicted Lincoln and his young son Tad at the conclusion of their tour of Richmond, shortly after the city’s fall to Union troops in 1865. The Sons of Confederate Veterans set up a Web site and peppered local officials to try and derail the statue’s installation. There was no middle ground to be sought, no compromise to be reached. Ferguson enjoys taking potshots at turn-back-the-clock Confederates, but there are plenty of other things to catch his eye. There’s the annual convention of Abraham Lincoln impersonators, called the Association of Lincoln Presenters. They gather at Santa Claus, Indiana, to discuss such weighty subjects as how much to charge for a presentation and how to generate publicity with local newspapers. As Lincoln enthusiasts go, they’re a fairly madcap bunch. Unlike many cultural commentators who sacrifice reporting in pursuit of a good one-liner, Ferguson treats his subject with just the right ratio of humor and sobriety. That’s not to say the book isn't often laugh-out-loud funny: it is. Land of Lincoln is ultimately a slightly nutty road trip through the hearts and minds of those who still have a tendency to think about and discuss Lincoln in the barely past tense. -- Stephen Miller

Life: The Most Notorious Crimes in American History (Time Inc.) 144 pages
Featuring material culled from the pages of Life magazine and other sources, this is one coffee table book that’s hard to resist -- even for those who claim they’re not interested in true crime. Ambitious in its scope, even if it eventually settles for only “Fifty Fascinating Cases from the Files,” this is an utterly engaging romp through the history of American crime, covering everything from Abraham Lincoln’s assassination to school shootings, with forays into Lizzie Borden, Patty Hearst, the Boston Strangler, the Lindbergh kidnapping and even the recent rash of school shootings -- proof, I guess, if any were needed, that violence and our culture continue to be somehow intrinsically linked. Well-presented, generously illustrated and sporting concise but engaging overviews of each crime, this volume is almost impossible to put down once you start browsing through it; the literary equivalent of a bag of chips. Alternative theories concerning individual crimes are included, and weighed fairly, leaving the sensationalism for others to explore. The brief but informative essays in this book are plenty sensational enough. The editors are to be commended for playing it straight -- letting the facts, and the often disturbing but compelling photos, tell the story. The only real disappointment to be found is in the aftermath, when you read the final pages and close the book at last, and realize that the editors missed several interesting -- and equally notorious -- crimes. The assassination of Jesse James? University of Texas gunman Charles Whitman? Bonnie and Clyde? I can hardly wait for Volume Two. -- Kevin Burton Smith

Penguins of the World by Wayne Lynch (Firefly Books) 175 pages
In the late 1970s, Wayne Lynch left a successful career in emergency medicine to become a full-time wildlife photographer and science writer. The passion Lynch brought to his new career shows up in every corner of Penguins of the World. As the author writes in his introduction, “For the past 28 years, I have devoted my life to the study and photography of wildlife behaviour, and no group of creatures has interested me more than penguins.” If you loved any of the penguin-related films that have done so well in the last few years, not only will you enjoy Penguins of the World, but you’ll find that, in terms of stunning photography, clear presentation and a wealth of information, Lynch’s book doesn’t suffer by comparison. Lynch delves into every aspect of penguin lives and loves and shares the result with us beautifully. Penguins of the World is stunning. -- David Middleton

Random Illuminations: Conversations with Carol Shields by Eleanor Wachtel (Goose Lane) 181 pages
One of the reasons so many of us continue to be hungry for pieces of the writer Carol Shields -- beyond, of course, the fact that, at 68, she died too soon -- was that her body of work, while impressive, was not as large as we’d like. And what exists of Shields’ writing is so wonderful that even though she died in 2003 after battling breast cancer, we still can’t bring ourselves to believe that this is all there will be: that there will no more. Ten novels. Four short story collections. Three books of poetry. Six plays. A biography and a book of criticism. Two anthologies edited. OK: it sounds like a lot, does it not? But it’s not enough. But there are bits of here out there and, as they’re published, we want to know. For instance, earlier this year, we saw the publication of A Memoir of Friendship: The Letters Between Carol Shields and Blanche Howard. And now, a similar yet somehow completely different book, Random Illuminations by the master interviewer Eleanor Wachtel, who understands our hunger for Shields and who, in her preface, says that she wants the book “to honour Carol’s memory and to celebrate how alive her voice is in today’s world.” Wachtel’s book offers up a series of conversations, interviews as well as snatches of correspondence. The resulting book gives us a portrait of a wonderful writer whose voice we would not see stilled. -- Monica Stark

Sad, Mad and Bad: Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 by Lisa Appignanesi (McArthur & Company) 531 pages
Polish-born novelist and award-winning biographer Lisa Appignanesi brings us the fascinating history of women and madness with the eye -- and heart -- of a fictionist. “The simplest way to begin,” Appignanesi writes in her introduction, “is to say that this is the story of madness, badness and sadness and the ways in which we have understood them over the last two hundred years.” And this thought, also from the introduction, really sets up both the tone and the direction of Sad, Mad and Bad: “I have long been aware of the shallowness of sanity. Most of us are, in one way or another. Madness, certainly a leap of the irrational, is ever close.” And more. At times her descriptions read like some weird and touching poetry. But it isn’t just the poetic end of madness Appignanesi approaches, but how we have understood -- or more to the point misunderstood -- sanity and what it is made of and what our culture has done both with it and about it. At times, Appignanesi looks at the various mental diseases through the lens of some of the best known sufferers. This device brings the author’s points home neatly when, for instance, we see Virginia Woolfe struggling with what we now know was manic depression while Zelda Fitzgerald battled schizophrenia. Just to keep you on your toes, while the book was published in Canada by McArthur & Company late in 2007 as Sad, Mad and Bad, the UK and the US won’t see the book until April 2008 when it will be published as Mad, Bad, Sad. I have no explanation, but I will say that it’s a tremendous book that will probably make a lot of other publication’s best of lists in 2008. -- Linda L. Richards

Satan’s Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York’s Trial of the Century by Mike Dash (Crown Books) 464 pages
Crooked lawmen, political strivers, grafters and gamblers, low dives and criminal hijinks -- Satan’s Circus has those attractions and more, all centered around the tale of the only police officer in U.S. history to be executed for murder. British writer Mike Dash’s record of the rise and fall of Charley Becker, a handsome, German-descended New York City cop, is a colorful, captivating lesson in dishonor among thieves. Despite being trusted by his superiors and given responsibility for taming vice in early 1900s Manhattan, Becker was living a double life as the head of a widespread extortion racket. He thought himself invulnerable. But the murder of a casino owner who’d threatened to expose Becker made this decorated cop a target of ambitious journalists and prosecutors. Turned on by his fellow brigands, and despite his wife’s efforts to clear him of wrongdoing, Becker wound up paying with his life for Gotham’s rank corruption. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Selected Letters of Aldous Huxley edited with an introduction by James Sexton (Ivan R. Dee) 500 pages
“In a letter of May 9 1929,” James Sexton writes in his introduction to Selected Letters of Aldous Huxley, “Aldous Huxley advised that he was ‘not one of nature’s letter-writers. Self-contained and placid misanthropists are bad correspondents.’” Nonetheless, this collection of Huxley’s correspondence -- the first to be published since the late 1960s -- makes for fascinating reading. Even if Huxley were not, as Sexton informs us, “a born epistolarian,” the times in which he lived and the people he both surrounded himself with and with whom he corresponded together create a fascinating portrait of a deeply talented man. Add to this the transition readers who choose to move chronologically through the book will see: from serious artist with a touch of philosopher in his formative years to someone with strong views on the way things ought to be later on. Masterfully edited, this collection of Huxley’s letters in the end provide an almost living, breathing biography in the author’s own hand. -- Aaron Blanton

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs (Simon & Schuster) 400 pages
In 2004, A.J. Jacobs, editor of Esquire, wrote about his experience reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a year in The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. He has now undertaken a feat of similar magnitude by following the Bible literally (okay, as literally as possible without getting arrested or murdered) in the logically titled, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. Both books are more entertaining than educational, and both are well worth reading. A word of warning regarding The Year of Living Biblically, though: if you don’t have a sense of humor, you may be disappointed. Everyone else, read on! -- Mary Ward Menke

Best of 2007: Art & Culture

Architectural Inspiration: Styles, Details, Sources by Richard Skinulis and Peter Christopher (The Boston Mills Press) 528 pages
In a world gone mad with home renovations and new construction, Architectural Inspiration is the ultimate design and wish book. This is the go-to-guide for the homeowner facing rethinking their existing home -- or designing a new one -- helping filling in the blanks that would-be designers without an actual design background will encounter. Are you dealing with double hung or casement windows? What about the roof? Will it be shingle, shake or tile? How about a stone floor, or reclaimed wood, or linoleum? What are all the options? How are they the same? How do they differ? And all of this information is aimed at one goal: how will this work for me? Now, clearly, Architectural Inspiration will probably not hold all of the answers but it’s certainly a gorgeous, well executed path to gathering together all the questions. -- David Middleton

The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation by Judy Chicago (Merrell) 308 pages
When artist Judy Chicago’s landmark show, The Dinner Party, opened in early 1979, 5000 people stood in line at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art to see it. Earlier this year, and nearly three decades later, the exhibit found a permanent home with the opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. This book commemorates and documents this monumental exhibit in a grand and appropriate way. Larger in scale, color and production values than previous books, The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation does justice to Chicago’s symbolic history of women in Western civilization. A landmark book worthy of a landmark exhibit. Bravo! -- Monica Stark

Dream Homes: 100 Inspirational Interiors by Andreas von Einsiedel (Merrell)
Like Richard Skinulis and Peter Christopher’s Architectural Inspiration: Styles, Details, Sources, another book I loved this year, Dream Homes provides a sourcebook for classic interior design. And by “classic” in this instance I mean enduring designs representing a wide variety of styles, but just about everything shared here is breathtaking and -- as the title suggests -- inspirational. “Traditional or vernacular architecture and design endures, partly because in most countries it still forms the bulk of the housing stock .... As land becomes scarce and planning restrictions become tighter, the building of new homes is increasingly difficult. Instead, the current focus is on reorientation.” And, as just about anyone could tell you, before you begin with reorientation, you’d best have inspiration or disaster will ensue. Dream Homes has all of that in abundance. It’s a delight and a surprise, one I anticipate consulting often in the coming years. -- David Middleton

Frank Lloyd Wright in New York by Jane King Hession and Debra Pickrel (Gibbs Smith) 159 pages
Though Frank Lloyd Wright in New York concerns itself entirely with the years the architect spent in New York City -- 1955 to 1959 -- the defining moment of the book for me comes when Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe -- at the time husband and wife -- ask Wright to design a home for them on piece of property in Connecticut. The 90-year-old Wright mostly napped on the way out to the Miller’s “rundown old farm” but once there he “energetically and without pause” tramped up and down the hilly acreage. “On reaching the summit, Miller explained to Wright that he and Monroe did not want ‘some elaborate house with which to impress the world,’ but rather a home that reflected their desire to live simply. Miller observed: ‘this news had not the slightest interest for him.’” Indeed, the drawings he came up with -- for a house that was never built -- look modern even to the contemporary eye. Rounded wings spread here and there, a huge circular central pod perches at the edge of a reflecting pool: grand only begins to cover it. I like this story because it seems so typical of this architect. (Typical, also, of this couple, when one thinks of it. I mean, if I want to have a simple little place built for me, I would be unlikely to ask for suggestions from the man who called himself “the greatest architect in the world.” What does it say if you do?) Throughout his lifetime, Wright had said he would never live in New York, calling it “the greatest and greediest mouth in the world.” Yet he spent most of the last five years of his life there and, arguably, made the strong impressions that would ensure his place in immortality. Frank Lloyd Wright in New York does a terrific job of documenting these years, managing to say new things in a field that has been so well covered, it’s surprising that there’s anything at all more to say. -- David Middleton

Hammett’s Moral Vision by George J. “Rhino” Thompson (Vince Emery Productions) 246 pages
Reading Dashiell Hammett can change your life. It certainly changed George Thompson’s. He went from being a bright young academic to a man with an interesting career in law enforcement. In the meantime, he wrote a doctoral dissertation which became (in this expanded, updated form) Hammett’s Moral Vision -- a work which itself helped shape the intellectual lives of those who read it in serialized form in The Armchair Detective magazine in the early 1970s. Thompson’s work was the first serious, comprehensive critical examination of Hammett’s five novels, and it remains perhaps the best -- still stimulating and insightful after all these years. The author sees Hammett’s body of work as displaying a darkening social and moral vision, which ends in the chilly alienation of his final book. “To see the novels as I have argued,” he writes, “points, I think, to at least one reason Hammett never again wrote a major novel after The Thin Man; he had no more to say. He had worked out as far as he could the possibilities of the questions he had raised concerning individual man and society.” -- Tom Nolan

The Making of Star Wars by J.W. Rinzler (Ballantine Books) 372 pages
It was bound to happen. What with making-of books de rigeur these days -- almost as commonplace as making-of documentaries on DVDs -- someone was bound to realize that one of the great-greats had yet to see such a tribute. This one clocks in at a staggering 314 pages ... and those are way-oversize pages, not your typical 8-by-10-ish leaves. The word for this is exhaustive. It covers everything from the very earliest itches on creator George Lucas’ neck in the years he was making American Graffiti, all the way up to the original’s box office receipts. Throughout, there are hundreds of images, from film stills to behind-the-scenes shots to Lucas’ handwritten notes and script pages to set design sketches. It’s a really a you-name-it-it’s-here kind of thing. Rinzler’s account reads like a filmmaking War and Peace, complete and replete with every possible detail about early drafts of the screenplay, the frustrating intricacies of dealmaking with the studios, the ups and downs and innovations of production and special effects, and the compromises Lucas was forced to make just get the film produced. There have been zillions of words written about Star Wars (and I’ve read my share), but these several thousand more are perhaps the most valuable, a laser-like examination of every little bit of creative energy that went into the film that has become a true force in filmmaking. Finally, a making-of that’s worth all the trouble. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr. by Burt Boyar (Regan Books) 352 pages
Sammy Davis, Jr. was an accomplished photographer. Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr. is the first book to collect hundreds of his images between two covers. It’s a powerful testament to another side of the man’s awesome talent. We think of Davis as an entertainer par excellence, a member of the Rat Pack. But if these images are any indication, his passion was the photograph. The book includes some reminiscences, but the photos are the point here, and they don’t disappoint. Here are Davis’ parents. Here’s Davis headlining at Ciro’s in L.A. Here are Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis on a movie set. Here are Dean and Sinatra in Vegas, just before showtime. Here are shots of a Sinatra recording session, the singer into his work, the photographer there to document. Here are Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe, backstage on a movie set. It goes on and on. Bob Hope. Jimmy Durante. Early early Sonny and Cher. James Dean. Nat “King” Cole. Phil Silvers. Danny Thomas. Robert Mitchum. Peter Lawford. Martin Luther King, Jr. Bobby and Jackie and Patricia Kennedy. Nixon. Sure, this might look like a book, even a vanity book about a star’s hobby, but it’s much more than that. I wouldn’t even say it’s just a document about Davis’ photographic talent. Rather, it’s an insightful portrait of a period of our history, when black became something other than a four-letter word, when entertainment and politics rocked, when America endured a paradigm shift we’re still feeling today. This is history the way it should be seen: unrehearsed, unaware, as real as it gets. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Shells by Paul Starosta and Jacques Senders (Firefly Books) 379 pages
“Shells have inspired the realm of human imagination, influenced the Surrealist art world, been buried in ancient tombs. Shells have served as geometric and abstract symbols, among ancient civilizations, with spirals and stripes of converging lines having particularly deep significance.” And as lovely and passionate as the words that describe shells in the introduction to this book, nothing will prepare you for the book itself, a majestic coffeetable-sized tribute to the beauty of form and function represented by this “unique and perfect masterpiece of nature.” As the book points out, shells have fascinated humans since the time of Aristotle and most probably before. And it’s possible that this fascination has never been given a more beautiful and complete literary form than in Shells. More than 300 breathtaking photos cover nearly 400 pages. The photos themselves are astonishing, treating each shell like a work of art, which, when considered, perhaps it is: though created by the hand of nature, not of man. Even those who lack a passion for shells will appreciate this book, in itself an impressive, interesting and majestic work of art. -- India Wilson

Sitcoms: The 101 Greatest TV Comedies of All Time by Ken Bloom and Frank Vlastnik (Black Dog & Leventhal) 336 pages
There’s a moment when you know this book will be unlike anything you have ever seen ... and I do mean “ever.” Open the cover, turn two pages, and there it is: a photograph of Laura Petrie, in her signature capri pants, dancing in one of those iconic episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. The thing is, the photo is in color! The chair behind Laura is yellow! The sofa: brown. The rug: green! Her shirt: red! It’s unbelievable, really, the instantaneous transformation of world from black-and-white to “living color.” That’s what this book is all about: bringing serious color to the black-and-white memories we have about the shows we all love. There’s a show here for everyone; here are some samples (alphabetically): “The Addams Family,” “Barney Miller,” “Cheers,” “The Donna Reed Show,” “Family Affair,” “Get Smart,” “Julia,” “The Life of Riley,” “I Love Lucy,” “M*A*S*H,” “One Day at a Time,” “Soap.” The text is endlessly insightful, covering history, behind-the-scenes gossip, original casts, up-close profiles of the most memorable character actors, sitcom flops, military sitcoms, radio sitcoms, sitcoms from the movies, sitcoms with movie stars and more. The authors know their stuff, and they know how to make all of this material as entertaining as the shows themselves. But as good as all that is, what drew me in was the photos. Mostly, they’re not unexpected fare: production stills, publicity stills, behind-the-scenes stills. But what you remember are those color images of the shows and characters who live in black-and-white. This book is 24 karat gold all the way through, but those color photos are 100 per cent platinum. -- Tony Buchsbaum

This Year You Write Your Novel by Walter Mosley (Little, Brown & Company) 112 pages
Landfills and library used-book sales are packed to the brim with self-help works, and none seem more insidious at times than books on how to tap your muse and write the Great American Novel/Drama/Screenplay. Many of them are written by either no-name academics who seem to live only within the pages of Poet and Writer and Writer’s Digest, or literary artists who receive glowing reviews but whose books wind up on the remainder tables next to their how-to guides. There are exceptions, of course, including Stephen King’s marvelous On Writing. And in 2007, detective Easy Rawlins’ creator, Walter Mosley, contributed to the pile in a major way with This Year You Write Your Novel. In a tight text that can be devoured in a single sitting (Mosley tells us that it runs fewer than 25,000 words in length), he lays it out for you -- how to show and not tell, the pros and cons of first- versus third-person narrators, research, structure, the distinction between story and plot, the need for multiple drafts and how to know when you’re done. It should be clearly stated that this is not a “how to get published” book. While Mosley briefly touches on markets and agents, this is not a manual on how to crack the bestseller lists or impress the buyers from Barnes & Noble. This is a book about the joy, frustration and ecstasy of writing a novel. Aspiring writers should have this volume near their writing desk. -- Stephen Miller

Why Not Catch-21?: Fifty Book Titles and Their Origins by Gary Dexter (Frances Lincoln) 228 pages
What’s in a name? More than you’ve ever imagined replies author Gary Dexter, who in Why Not Catch-21? answers the questions that some titles ask by their very existence. “Most book titles simply describe the contents of the book they are attached to,” Dexter writes in his foreword. “Crime and Punishment is about crime and punishment, and Brideshead Revisited is about revisiting Brideshead. But a small number of books have a rather odd, separate existence, almost as independent literary artefacts. The stories behind them are quite different from the stories behind the actual books.” Readers of the Sunday Telegraph will know that Dexter’s book has grown out of his column for that paper, “Title Deed” and that it can be deeply interesting to learn of the origins of the title of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming or that of A Clockwork Orange. (Though Dexter’s thoughts are not conclusive on this latter.) And even if some of the included titles push at the edges of the mandate of the book -- like Frankenstein and Lolita -- it’s still fascinating to learn a bit of history about classics whose stories we thought we knew well. If there is, at times, a faint stuffiness to Dexter’s prose and even a vague superiority, it does not, in the end, detract from the richness of the work. This is a book I imagine I’ll be quoting and telling stories from for years to come. -- Linda L. Richards

Best of 2007: Books for Children

The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z by Steve Martin and Roz Chast (Flying Dolphin Press/Doubleday) 64 pages
It’s no secret that celebrity names sell books. In the last few years, we’ve seen children’s books from Madonna, Jamie Lee Curtis, Billy Crystal, Bill Cosby, Maria Shriver, Jerry Seinfeld and many others. In some ways, it’s not right to lump Steve Martin in with these others. While Martin is an actor, he’s also recognized as a writer. His novella, Shopgirl, was a bestseller long before it was a film and he’s written many other books as well as the screenplays for some of his most popular films. He’s in good form here with an alphabet book that provides a real mouthful with each letter. He’d aided in this by a really wonderful illustrator. Roz Chast’s illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, Scientific American, the Harvard Business Review and many, many others. You may not know her name, but when you see her work, you’ll recognize it. Together they create a work of delicate sophistication and great whimsey that I anticipate will be delighting children for many years to come. -- David Middleton

Before the Storm by Sean McMullen (Ford Street Books)
Written for children and younger teens, this time travel book is a hoot even for adult readers. It’s set in a place and historical period that isn’t often dealt with in fiction and certainly not in speculative fiction. It is 1901, the year in which Australia’s colonies became one Federation. There’s going to be a huge celebration in Melbourne’s Exhibition Building, site ofAutralia’s first Parliament. Into this time and place come two young travellers from a nightmarish future world which will come about if a certain terrorist attack on the opening ceremony isn’t prevented. The two are helped by four teenagers, two middle-class siblings, a working-class boy who sells naughty postcards and a girl whose mother’s art supply shop plays an important role finding out what’s going on. It would have been all too easy to turn this tale into a regular adventure or a grim thriller, but it’s great fun -- even, at times, hilarious. It is one of the more enjoyable books I have read this year. -- Sue Bursztynski

The Big Book of Pop Culture: A How-to Guide for Young Artists by Hal Niedzviecki (Annick Press) 183 pages
Nedzviecki's book is very good and could be an important one for kids at that delicate age of understanding. At worst The Big Book of Pop Culture will offer a few interesting hours of entertainment as it explores the development of pop culture and our place in it. At best, the book will provide a key of empowerment for young people poised on the threshold of creativity. I’m betting most parents would be fine with either outcome. -- Linda L. Richards

Dinosaurs by Thomas R. Holtz Jr., illustrations by Luis V. Rey (Random House) 432 pages
We are fascinated by dinosaurs. As a result, books on the topic are anything but scarce. Even so, Dinosaurs fits in a niche not as well padded out as some of the others because, while there are lots of dinosaur-related books for new readers and young children and many for adults, young adults have less of choice. And their needs are different: they require more meat than younger children. They need more detail and scientific information. At the same time, it should be less sophisticated than the information a book for adults might include. Sure: we want young adults to have all of the information available, but it should be delivered in a way that is highly understandable and won’t deter them from their course of discovery. Thomas R. Holtz’ Dinosaurs delivers on all of these demands, and more. The book has been written specifically for young adult readers, but from the perspective of a palaeontologist. The information is shared in a gentle and lucid manner and while the writing is crystal clear, he never, ever speaks down to his young readers. And it’s not possible to discuss this book without mentioning the illustrations. Luis V. Rey is one of the most respected illustrator of dinosaurs in the world today. Nor are these your grandfather’s dinosaurs: all monochromatic and covered by identical rubbery looking skin. Rey’s dinosaurs come in every hue of the rainbow. More. And are covered in feathers and scales and tufts of strange fur. Dinosaurs is encyclopaedic in scope and exceeds all expectations. A superior book the young dinosaur lover in your life will cherish. -- Aaron Blanton

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (Raincoast/Bloomsbury/Scholastic)
When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows first came out, I read it in one day, because I had a review deadline. It was a fascinating exercise, if not, perhaps, the best way to appreciate a book. After I’d filed my review, I read the book again, taking my time. Then I re-read the entire series, to see how many hints there were of what was to come. Well, there was the odd hint. I had always wondered about the triumphant look in Dumbledore’s eyes when Harry told him that Voldemort had taken his blood to help his regeneration, and in the last book we found out. In that scene on the Astronomy Tower in The Halfblood Prince, we all wondered about Dumbledore’s groan “Severus -- please...” but who could have predicted that there was significance in Draco’s Disarming of him -- a significance that would eventually save Harry’s life? It was clever, but not helpful before you had actually read the last novel. I felt, at the time, that there were a number of unnecessary deaths -- and some of those happened offstage. Other deaths were inevitable and predictable. Snape, for example, had to die. I had never seen a way around it. It was just a question of whether he would die saving Harry’s life or, as happened, pointlessly and tragically. There were a number of other things that really couldn’t have been predicted, but no matter. For me, reading this book one of the more exciting experiences of this year, if only because of the anticipation and that first, rushed reading over coffee and cake, surrounded by other people doing the same. It could so easily have been a disappointment, but it wasn’t, for me, though I could have done without that epilogue. It’s a reading experience I will always remember with pleasure. -- Sue Bursztynski

Heart of Gold by Michael Pryor (Random House Australia) 488 pages
This was the most entertaining book I read this year. Set in an alternative universe Edwardian era, it’s the second in a series about the adventures of gifted young magician Aubrey Fitzwilliam and his two friends, schoolfriend George and the beautiful, intelligent and feisty Caroline, who can shoot and do martial arts, among her many talents. In this story, the trio are having non-stop adventures in this world’s equivalent of Paris, fighting everything from zombies to dinosaurs. It’s exciting and funny and utterly likeable. I’m waiting for it to be turned into a film, but meanwhile, it’s the ideal kind of page-turner to take on Christmas holidays -- by the fire with a box of chocolates if you’re in the northern hemisphere or to the beach if, like me, you live south of the equator. But be careful to keep an eye on the tide -- it just might sweep you away. -- Sue Bursztynski

How Many?: Spectacular Paper Sculptures by Ron van der Meer (Random House/Robin Correy Books) 12 pages
I’ve been exposed to lots of pop up books and I kind of figured I was over them. Let’s face it: on the surface, there’s a limited amount of things you can do with the form. After you’ve seen your quota of castles/cottages/barns pop up -- each with its own little complement of soldiers/builder pigs/lowing cows -- it’s enough. But Ron van der Meer’s How Many? goes beyond any pop up book you’ve ever seen. Well, certainly any I’ve ever seen. In short, How Many? is brilliant. Intended for children seven and up, I’ve got a hunch many of the buyers for this book will be collectors, drawn by the paper sculptures promised in the book’s title. If that’s the case, they won’t be disappointed. No wagging cow heads here, but brightly colored shapes forming complex patterns that spring up whimsically when the page is opened. van der Meer is considered to be one of the pioneers of this form of book. He is the author of over 150 books, including many pop-ups, but considers How Many? to be his very best to date. Children and art loving adults will be equally enthralled by How Many?, a truly wonderful work of art that invites participation as well as visual enjoyment. -- David Middleton

Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin (Harcourt) 502 pages
In a year that was dominated by the conclusion of what was arguably the best known series of books of all times, the book that may well be the best in Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Annals of the Western Shore” series did not, perhaps, receive all of the attention it deserved. In Powers we meet the house slave Gavir, whose power for remembering things that have not yet happened has implications far beyond his knowledge. Powers is beautifully written and tautly told and it might be one of Le Guin’s best yet. Considering this author has won the National Book Award and been a finalist for both the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, that’s saying something. I’m looking forward to seeing where this series will lead. -- Lincoln Cho

The Siege: Under Attack in Renaissance Europe by Stephen Shapiro, illustrated by John Mantha (Annick Press) 56 pages
When one thinks of books for children, military history is not a topic that springs quickly to mind. There’s good reason for this. Children today are easily bored and military history is one of those topics that can move quickly towards the pedantic. It probably does enliven things somewhat in The Siege that the author chose to set his Renaissance battle in a fictional town. A fictional battle affords the author and illustrator the ability to customize everything conveniently. The Spanish are coming, the town must be cleared, food must be stockpiled and so on. The device of fiction also allows our recorders access in a way that would not be possible with a book that was strictly non-fiction. “The grumbling had been going on for weeks,” Shapiro writes at one point, “starting quietly and gradually growing in strength.” The tone is often intimate and immediate: you are there while the tensions in the town rises during the siege and the town is bombarded. Part of this vivid feeling is certainly due the amazing illustrations by John Mantha. The paintings are careful and detailed and the entire book is given a warm, sepia treatment, as though it were an ancient manuscript. The resulting book is a treasure for budding military historians, aged 10 and older. -- Aaron Blanton

600 Black Spots by David A. Carter (Little Simon) 20 pages
Sure, there are words, but who needs words when you’ve got these jaw-dropping pop-ups? The jacket says this book is for people three and up. I rather think it’s more for the “ups” than the “threes,” since the constructions are so fragile that any grabby kid could render the book garbage in about five seconds. The game here is that you’re supposed to count the friggin’ dots. But really, who cares? Just open the cover onto the first spread, and you’ll have to stop and take a deep breath. It’ll slay you. Forty-five terribly narrow strips of paper, arranged in a fan that fans by you as you open the thing. I mean, who does this? Well, David A. Carter does -- and he does it brilliantly. Once you get over the first page, there are other miracles: the Mondrian-inspired concoction on the next spread, the one a few pages later which requires you to pull some tabs (transforming this kids book into a kinetic sculpture worthy of that form’s master, Yaacov Agam), another one two or three spreads later, which (with your help) turn into dancing pyramids of color and string, and the last, an explosion of color and rounded paper spikes. This isn’t a book to read -- but it is one to experience again and again. And yes, again. It’s a bloody miracle. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Tin Angel by Shannon Cowan (Lobster Press) 336 pages
Personal tragedy forces Ronnie Page from her home, the lodge that her family has owned for generations. But the tragedy seems to go even deeper when 14-year-old Ronnie is accused of murdering the man who has been helping her family since the tragedy... and who Ronnie blames for most all of the disasters that have been plaguing her family. This is author Cowan’s third book, the first two were written for adults. Even so, Cowan hits her stride right out of the gate. “I was fourteen years old when they arrested me for the murder of Louis Moss,” the book begins, “a man I knew briefly as the man who wrecked my family.” Like life, don’t look for a happy ending and all of the things that Ronnie must face -- accusation, incarceration and even personal redemption -- are sometimes hard to watch. Tin Angel is rich and real and bittersweet. A triumph for an author who we anticipate still has many stories to tell. -- Linda L. Richards

What They Found: Love on 145th Street by Walter Dean Myers (Wendy Lamb Books) 243 pages
A new young adult book by Walter Dean Myers is reason to sit up and take notice. Arguably, one of the most respected authors of literature for young adults writing today, Myers is best known for his novel Fallen Angels published in 1988. The book, which is about the conflict in Vietnam, is number 24 on the American Library Association’s list of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000. His first book, Where Does the Day Go, was published in 1969, and there have been more than 50 since. Along the way, Myers has won or been nominated for every award he was eligible for and he is a two-time winner of the Newbery award, a five-time recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award and a two-time National Book Award Finalist. What They Found is a collection of connected short stories, and many of them take place in the Curl-E-Cue beauty shop against the backdrop of the lives struggling there. In one respect, What They Found celebrates the African American community Myers is proud to be part of, in another it highlights some of the things that connect us all. -- Monica Stark

The Whole Sky Full of Stars by René Saldana, Jr. (Random House) 131 pages
Though The Whole Sky Full of Stars takes place in a Latino community in Texas, the challenges faced by our heroes, Barry and Alby, are universal. What else is universal: author Saldana’s prose. Though the sentence’s are constructed simply, the emotions and relationships Saldana conveys are anything but. Reluctant readers will appreciate this simplicity, sure: but so will those who realize that the very prose is often less rather than more. Allowing the reader to come to conclusions that the writer gives us the groundwork for. Boys especially will enjoy Saldana’s book for the boxing scenes, and for those that center around the car that grace’s the book’s gorgeous cover. (It’s a 1964 Ford Galaxie and it has a meaty role.) But, again, the story here is universal: the importance of friends in one’s life. Of family. And the inevitability of truth. -- Lincoln Cho